


To quote MIKA, age 35, of Beirut, Lebanon: "Where have all the good (gay) guys gone?"

by transishimaru



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Discussion of Homophobia, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Humor, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Pressure Stimming, a really pointless section where they talk about the Avengers, and memes., and really brief mention of naegami, autistic Ishimaru, autistic Peko & Gundham too, there's also really brief kuzupeko, they're in there very briefly so i didn't tag it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 11:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19198027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transishimaru/pseuds/transishimaru
Summary: People always treat Kiyotaka like he's oblivious, and honestly, he doesn't get it. Why does no one else seem to get that he's gay, not stupid? It's everyone else who's making things unnecessarily complicated.(Updated for editing 6/19)





	To quote MIKA, age 35, of Beirut, Lebanon: "Where have all the good (gay) guys gone?"

**Author's Note:**

> Alright. So. First, author's disclaimer: I'm actually autistic. That's why I write so many characters as autistic, and about half the reason I wrote this fic in the first place.
> 
> The title is a reference to the MIKA song ["Good Guys"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZQ_9eebry0) in which one of the lines is, I kid you not, "Where have all the gay guys gone?" It was also sort of written with the prompt in mind of, "What if Ishimaru is actually being really straight forward about things when he makes accidental innuendo, and doesn't understand why Mondo isn't responding to his advances?"
> 
> That's...not really how it was phrased, but I don't know where the original post is. I also debated splitting this up into two chapters, but that would kind of mess up the flow since "what if this is like 20,000 words" was a joke. So, I'm sorry about the length. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

There’s no such thing as an effect with no cause, even if that cause is not readily discernible to the effect’s observers. That is the kind of logic that Ishimaru tries to keep in mind when he interacts with his classmates. And, even with that in mind, he has to admit that he is still terribly, terribly confused much of the time.

“I don’t understand how the grief of miscarriage is funny to you,” he says, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. He has to remind himself frequently that he is not, despite his classmates’ immaturity and relative inability to function without guidance, their father. Or, as they so often call him, their mother. In the end, his attempts not to judge or curb the edges in Makoto‘s uncharacteristically insensitive thinking fail him, and he heaves off what he knows is a disproportionately heavy sigh, relative to the situation. “I would have thought, given your friendliness with the members of our class assigned female at birth, that this kind of joke would be -” _Don’t be rude, don’t be rude, don’t be rude_ \- “Beneath you.”

Mission, failed. Leon makes a noise behind Makoto that is something between a wheeze and a choke, and he whispers in a screech, “This is so fucking funny.”

On Makoto, at least, it has the desired effect; he recoils with guilt, hands drawn up like he’s trying to physically defend himself from Kiyotaka’s disappointment. Leon, he can work on later. “I - I don’t think it’s supposed to be taken that way, Taka,” Makoto says, sounding panicked.

“Then how is it _supposed_ to be taken?” he asks, thinking to himself it’s going to have to be one heck of an explanation to make up for the unfortunate implications.

Taka’s eyes follow the lines in Makoto’s throat as he swallows, remembering all the times his dad sat him down to teach him how to read other peoples’ tells and shooting back, every time, that each reaction could symptomatic of something else entirely. His dad had looked at him then like his peers frequently do in conversations: like he was missing the point entirely.

Makoto lowers his arms from his defensive stance and readjusts his body into something less nervous. His eyes waver to the floor as he thinks, finger coming up to tap his cheek as his mind works. There’s a less charitable part of Taka’s brain saying that if the joke was as innocent as Makoto was trying to claim, he wouldn’t need a chance to think about it. Then Taka hears him mutter, “How do I put it?”, and he reconsiders.

Leon’s voice comes from behind them again, barely containing itself to a whisper. “I should be getting this on video.” There’s a thwack of some second onlooker smacking him, but Taka’s focus is too single-minded to seek out who it is.

Makoto doesn’t quite look at Leon, but it’s clear that while his glare is directed at the floor in between him and Taka, the insult is aimed at their classmate. Kiyotaka thinks for a moment that he can sympathize; he’s never been good at working under pressure, either, but Makoto recovers quicker than he ever has. In fact, Leon’s outburst only seems to inspire him, and when he redirects his gaze back on Taka it’s with the kind of renewed vigor that gives the color in his eyes darker hue. “People aren’t laughing at the miscarriage. Of course that’s not funny.” He punctuates his speech with a brief silence, as if daring someone to argue. “What people are laughing at is how terribly the artist conveys his message. Look at these faces again,” he says, offering Taka his phone. “Do these people really look like they’ve been through something as traumatic as a miscarriage?”

Taka looks at the comic panels again, and has to concede that point in particular to Makoto. But there is still the matter of -

“I know you’re probably thinking that we shouldn’t be making fun of this guy’s art, because he probably worked hard on it.” Well, he certainly beat Kiyotaka to that punch. “And I can understand that. It’s more that this guy’s comics are usually like...really bad attempts at humor, so this kind of came out of nowhere. It wasn’t his typical storyline...”

Makoto’s confidence has waned further into his explanation, and Taka watches as he backs into his nervous tick again, the patch of skin he’s picking at nervously looking dry.

Taka does kind of get the point now, though. “So, what’s humorous about this is...the abrupt change in storytelling?”

“Yeah, kinda.” He looks surprised that Taka got what he was aiming for.

Kiyotaka tries not to be offended. He frowns at the picture one last time, as if telling the flat background and flatter characters that they’re on thin ice.  “Well, alright. I guess I just don’t have enough of a context to find it funny.”

“It’s called Control Alt Delete, if you want to look it up,” Leon blurts out. He still looks far too amused by everything, as if by telling Taka the name of the panel he’s playing some sort of clever joke. And Makoto seems to agree with him, looking back over his shoulder and saying his name warningly.

Taka takes it like a challenge, leveling him with his most resolute glare when he says, “Thank you. I will do my research.”

He tries not to be too annoyed by the snickering as he leaves.

* * *

The cause to Kiyotaka’s effect occurred in a fashion similar to this: at age six, or maybe seven, his father sat him down on the curb outside their house and told him, “It’s best if, in your interactions with others, you remain as straightforward as possible.”

Even in retrospect, Kiyotaka cannot begin to fathom what it was he might have been doing that spurred his father on to this particular lecture. As far back as he can remember, he has never been anything but uncomfortably forthright and thoroughly honest. If anything, he was more diligent in this area as a child; when a teacher asked his father in conference, ‘Does Kiyotaka tell you _every_ little thing that happens during his day?’, his father had responded with a tired, but ultimately fond, ‘In detail.’

On this particular occasion, Kiyotaka had been trying to make friends in the neighborhood and socialize with his peers, only to be rebuffed at every advancement. It often felt like there was an invisible barrier blocking him from his ultimate goal. In his too often dreams about his childhood, the analogy became less of a metaphor, and the walls he couldn’t see closed around him until he was stuck in the middle of the road, staring helplessly around him.

(The school’s therapist told him these were “stress dreams,” making sure to emphasize the phrase by having the saccharine computerized rabbit do her best attempt at air quotations. Neither the therapist nor the rabbit looked impressed when mimicked it back to her, letting her know that her suggestion that he relieve stress was “not helpful.”

But why, exactly, did she think he had gone to a therapist in the first place?)

From his own flashback-within-a-flashback, he digresses.

He looked up at his father, his eyes wide and filled with frustrated tears, and said, “But I _am_ being honest. They’re the ones who aren’t.” He remembers his father giving him a look that said, very clearly, _Well then I don’t know what else to tell you,_ squeezing his shoulder, and getting up to do something else. They were alike, in that way.

In fact, besides the eyebrows, it was the only thing he inherited from his father at all.

* * *

Kiyotaka Ishimaru has been friends with Mondo Oowada for more than three hundred sixty-five days. He had actually, at one point in time, been keeping a calendar, marking each milestone with a circle on the day, and marking the bottom lefthand corner with small x’s that became smiley faces whenever someone else visited his room. He wasn’t sure anymore who had started it, but it carried along from person to person, symbolic of something beyond its simple meaning (here: happiness), carried on without instruction and no clear purpose.

In the field of biology – or political science, where he learned the term, and everyone else looked dumbfounded – they call this practice memetics.

No. No, “dumbfounded” is rude. “Flabbergasted” is better. And if he is going to be literal, he can’t say _everyone else_ , because Chihiro was also familiar with the term. Byakuya might have been as well, but his focus never drifts to the only person in his class with whom he can consider his relationship entirely neutral. They don’t run in the same friend circles, because Byakuya does not have friends, nor does he run.

(Unless Naegi counts; but as the de facto control group, Taka doesn’t consider him.)

Their instructor had used paper airplanes as an example for the class. It wasn’t the most exciting example, but it was a universal enough example that anyone in the class should be able to reference it.

He might have been imagining it, but she seemed to be looking pointedly at him when she said ‘anyone.’ He couldn’t imagine what for, when Hiro was the one struggling to pronounce the word, and Mondo was the one struggling with the concept.

“I have a video for that,” Chihiro had said to him later. “Have you played _Metal Gear Solid 2_? You don’t mind spoilers, right?”

He’d said that he didn’t, and put his hand down on Taka’s shoulder, leaning far too close into his space, and said, “But if that doesn’t work, I can just ask Taka. Maybe he can make it easy on me.” And then they’d walked the rest of the way to the cafeteria, with Mondo’s hand near the back of his neck, thumb pressing just below the end of his hair.

He certainly could. But he wouldn’t want to. Taka hates memetics for the same reason he hates unsupervised get-togethers and loitering in front of convenience stores: everyone seems to know what to do but him. It would be ironic to claim his genetic makeup lacks it, but probably correct to state his DNA isn’t structured to receive that kind of information. He isn’t stupid, but he is autistic. And being straightforward in a world that relies on curves to hide behind is exhausting.

He is two other things:

  1. Starting to lose his overall desire to keep things in order; and,
  2. Too gay to be dealing with the hand that seemed to be making itself comfortable on his upper back.



* * *

Lately, Kiyotaka has been losing track of his thoughts. He has been, for the past seventeen years of his life, very ordered, very structured. He made and kept schedules, paid attention to patterns, noted any deviations from the norm to try and make himself more observant, only to find in the end that most things that mattered to him did not matter to anyone else.

He stopped counting the days because Oowada asked him to.

He has wondered more than once if Mondo regrets his decision to be friends. He has seemed, on more than one occasion, to be embarrassed by Taka, or at the very least, by things that Taka has said. Taka is never really sure if the things he says are embarrassing because he _says_ them, or because _he_ says them, or because they exist as a concept at all.

“We have been friends for a week.”  
“We have been friends for two weeks.”  
“We have been friends for three weeks.”  
“We have been friends for a month.”

He said them, at first, for himself, an auditory manifestation of his disbelief and pride. And he said them, to Mondo, because at first he thought that his friend would be excited about the idea as he was. And then he remembered that Mondo already had friends, so this was far from a novel experience for him.

Then, he was only saying it to make Mondo blush.

He is well aware of what their friendship looks like to outsiders and he will not be the person to lie in private by pretending the idea has never crossed his mind. He doesn’t believe in being dishonest, least of all with himself. So for a span of two weeks, he tells Mondo Oowada of the exact number of days they have been friends, because he likes the way Mondo looks when his face fills in soft pink.

He tries not to get ahead of himself, and he fails.

Mondo doesn’t blush for the same reasons he does. When he says it too loud, in a hallway too crowded with too many people they don’t know too well, Mondo looks at him from the corner of his eyes and blushes, red and uncomfortable, too high up on his cheeks, and says “Hey man, cut it out.”

Kiyotaka doesn’t need to be told things twice. Not for hearing, not for emphasis.

He tries not to feel or look disappointed. The keyword, as always, is _tries_ , because clearly he does something that communicates the way a hole has opened up in his chest. When he looks back, he thinks his tell might have been the way he avoided making any and all eye contact with Mondo for a week and a half afterward and only spoke to him in short, clipped sentences.

Mondo corners him, as much as someone can really corner you in your own space by standing in your doorway. He does, notably, keep his hand on the doorframe and his foot in the path, like he’s expecting Taka to slam the door in his face. “I didn’t mean ta hurt yer feelings,” he says, and Taka blinks at him. Whatever facial expression he’s making, Taka’s never learned it, or what the appropriate reactions to it are. So he blinks in lieu of saying anything, so that he won’t make the situation worse.

Which fails, because Mondo seems to fluster and panic when he doesn’t give him a verbal response. “I mean – ya don’t - ya don’t have to stop telling me the days n’ shit. I like it when you do that!”

Kiyotaka wants to say, _I’ve stopped counting_ , and he’s not sure if he wants to say it so that Mondo won’t feel compelled to lie to him or because he wants to see if Mondo will point out that he’s lying himself by saying it, but when he opens his mouth no noises come out and he just sort of...stares at Mondo’s chin.

And then he realizes that tears are overtaking his vision.

 _Crap_.

It’s not purposeful. He knows most people don’t intend to cry, or particularly enjoy crying, except maybe actors in television shows or stage plays who need to cry on command. And he knows, cognitively, that there’s nothing wrong with crying and that Mondo won’t judge him for it because he cries on what feels like a daily basis.

But his reason for crying isn’t cognitive, and neither is his embarrassment. For whatever that means. His body just reacts that way to stress, and everything from about age four on has been intensely stressful.

And he’s embarrassed because now he can’t get the words out and Mondo is looking at him in abject horror and shouting “Oh Jesus, oh fuck, ‘m so sorry -” and the nerves are kicking in, his eyes are starting to sting and water more. It’s looking up to be a pretty big disaster and Mondo, whose every reaction to any situation is a physical response, throws his arms around Kiyotaka and drags him into what would be, for a good half of their class, a back-cracking hug.

It’s the event that makes Taka realize it is too late tell himself ‘don’t get ahead of yourself’ because he is already laps ahead of where he should be. Or where he is. He’s not exactly sure how that turn of phrase works.

He’s felt a lot of things in his life, most of them moderately to extremely uncomfortable and not easily describable. But this is the first time he can remember feeling stupid, mouth open against the cotton of Mondo’s t-shirt because he is still trying to form sentences that will not come to him because all his trains of thought have decided to run into each other while his more coherent brain cells stand around and watch and say useless things like _Cotton tastes gross_ and _Is this pre-shrunk? You should ask him if he knows so he doesn’t ruin it in the laundry_.

He must make some kind of noise, because Mondo shushes him and runs a very large and warm hand up and down his spine in what he probably thinks is comforting gesture and probably would be comforting if it didn’t make his erratic thoughts coalesce into a blob of flashing neon lights that just read _BOY HOT_.

This is a terrible time to get a crush on Mondo. He’s pretty sure any time is a terrible time to get a crush on a guy he once watched punch through the glass of a vending machine. And this is a terrible time to remember that his reaction to that had been to give him detention and lecture him while internally denying that he had, in fact, thought it was kind of attractive that he could do that.

Now that he thinks back on it, he’s not sure if he remembered to tell anyone it was Mondo who broke the machine. So perhaps the Kuzuryu from the year above is right, and he is useless.

The raging fire in his mind dies down the longer he stays with his face pressed against the fabric that now not only tastes gross but feels gross where his drying cheek presses against it. So Mondo’s affectionate gesture of platonic camaraderie has more or less succeeded, and feeling Taka calm down he draws back and smiles down at Kiyotaka in a kind of lop-sided way, hand on Taka’s cheek and thumb brushing away his tears.

It’s kind of romantic, at least from what little Taka knows of romance. His breath hitches in his chest, this time not because he’s choking on words he can’t spit out, but because this has never happened to him before and the prospect makes him a little dizzy. He’s not sure if he’s all that ready for something like this to happen -

Which is probably a good thing, because his head and his mouth don’t work at the same speed or on the same page, as they say, and instead of saying something appropriate to the kind of situation he thinks he’s in, he says, “Crying is just my natural reaction to stress.”

Mondo, understandably, blinks at him in confusion, expression dropping into a frown.

“I’m not mad,” Taka clarifies, feeling angry at himself for failing to address the actual issue at hand, and for ruining whatever kind of moment this was. “I know it’s...” he struggles to find a word that won’t sound like an attempt at emotional manipulation when he says it, but he’s never been good speaking unprepared statements. “Weird,” he finally says, keeping his gaze off of Mondo so he doesn’t give in to his nerves again, “How I do friendship. It’s an...adjustment period.”

When he lets himself look back he finds that Mondo is nodding like he understands even through Kiyotaka’s inability to explain himself clearly. Even Taka’s not entirely sure he understands himself, so how Mondo’s managed to interpret the absolute nonsense he spouts is anybody’s guess.

He kind of pats Taka’s cheek and says “’S okay” before he drops his hands entirely, shoving them in his pockets and slouching. There’s still a line of water brimming on Taka‘s lower lids making it hard for him to look at his friend directly, sniffling as he is. He’s trying to think of a way to redirect the conversation back to Whatever That Was, where Mondo had been touching him so gently, but in the empty space Mondo starts talking again. “So. How many days’s it been?” 

Taka makes a point of looking at the calendar, although he doesn’t really need to. He knows it’s been a month and two weeks. “Forty-six days.”

* * *

The most exhausting part of being autistic, for Kiyotaka at least, is not the random bouts of sensory overload, his distaste for certain textures in clothing or food, insomnia, or the inability to regulate his volume or body temperature or emotions. They’re all things that he is more or less adjusted to, although the latter grouping of symptoms is, to quote Junko, “a total drag.” No; what really irritates Kiyotaka is the way nobody else seems to know how to communicate. So really, it’s not even _his_ problem, everyone else just seems to think it is, and expects him to change to accommodate their inflexibility.

And yet, supposedly, he’s the one with the “disorder.” The irony is not lost on him, but that doesn’t mean he has to appreciate it.

Somewhere around the third grade he stopped caring about playing keep-up with his peers’ fleeting interests, because it always seemed that by the time he started to understand they’d move on, or else they’d tell him that by engaging with the topic at all he’d “ruined it.” So when he stays up all night skimming through the ‘CAD’ website, trying to read as much as he possibly can before he passes out with his by-now-four-generations-old phone stuck to his face, it’s not because he actually cares about connecting with Leon on something. He just does it out of spite.

It’s funny, because Kiyotaka has never really considered himself a petty or vindictive person. He’s never done anything purely out of spite before, to his knowledge. Although now he thinks about it, maybe using other peoples’ hostility as a motivator to do better, to prove them wrong, is an act of spite.

...regardless, there is a kind of satisfaction he feels when Leon walks in with that smirk and ruffles Taka’s hair and asks him, “So did you read the comic?”

And Taka turns to look at him, expression unwavering, and says, “Every word.”

And Leon looks unnerved.

Mondo has apparently been right behind him for this entire exchange, glaring at Leon’s hand like a particularly offensive piece of art. He nudges Leon out of the way, saying “You can’t ruffle his hair, man, that’s weird.”

Leon’s eyes squint and his eyebrows tilt until he’s looking at Mondo with something not quite anger and not quite shock. “You do it all the time,” he points out, “And it’s not weird.”

“Yeah, well, tha’s diff’rent,” Mondo says, running his hands through Taka’s hair. To which, Taka has to agree, because this feels much different to Leon’s condescending gesture. How much of that is because Leon’s touch is much rougher where Mondo’s is more affectionate, fingers lingering at the base of his scalp, and how much of it is contrasted in Leon’s amusement at Taka‘s expense versus that prolonged eye contact with Mondo yesterday – Taka doesn’t know.

There is something in his chest that reaches out when Mondo touches him, that tells him to almost lean into the touch because yes, there is something between him and Mondo that makes this different, though Taka would never have imagined Mondo naming it in front of others after just a day -

But then he says, “Taka and I are bros, right?” and squeezes Taka’s shoulder as he moves past to his seat.

It seems to be enough for Leon, who shrugs and follows, neither one of them catching how their classmate freezes and stares at his hands where they rest on top of the desk, brows furrowed with an emotion he didn’t think he’d feel with someone he was supposed to know so well. This is, Taka thinks, what they call _mixed signals_.

* * *

The _Taka and I are bros, right?_ comment is still throwing him off after class. It would throw him off during class too, but he has learned to put his focus to one subject and he really never has been any good at concentrating on multiple things at once.

Kiyotaka is willing to admit that both his platonic and romantic experiences are severely lacking, but he’s pretty sure it’s unusual to refer to someone you intend to court as a sibling. It wasn’t to say that platonic and romantic attraction were mutually exclusive, because what would a romantic relationship even be without friendship? But there is very definitely something wrong with calling someone you are romantically or sexually attracted to your brother. The pieces don’t fit together.

He comes to the conclusion that he must have misconstrued something. Clearly Mondo had not meant for Kiyotaka to take caressing his cheek as a come-on. Perhaps that’s just how he interacts with all of his friends. He tries to imagine Mondo stroking Leon’s cheek, and in addition to deciding that it feels too far out of character even for a hypothesis, he realizes he is making horrid screeching noises against his plate with his fork.

It’s a perfect demonstration of his current internal conflict. And it is also a very, very bad sign.

If he were a bit more naïve, he’d think that his sudden feelings of possession are a result of having had no friends as a child. He’d think, _I’ve never had a friend before, so naturally I’d want to keep him to myself, the way starving people are hesitant to share food_. But he’s not naïve, or at least not as naïve about himself and his own feelings as people would believe. He doesn’t take issue with Mondo’s friendship with Leon or Chihiro or Makoto or the entire gang he leads. He only takes issue with the idea that Mondo might prefer their company, romantically, over his.

So maybe not possessiveness. Maybe jealousy.

He still has to wonder if that’s okay. It doesn’t feel okay; Mondo is not his, is not property to begin with and therefore cannot be owned by another person. Yet he is sure he has seen this somewhere before, that jealousy is a natural reaction, and that it’s unhealthy to deny your feelings.

When he thinks about it, it would probably be kind of nice if Mondo was a little possessive of him. It’s not a likely scenario, granted, because Taka doesn’t really have close friends outside of Mondo. Or any friends, really, because he hasn’t actually asked any of his other classmates if they consider him a friend.

It's another one of those things that people find “weird” and “uncomfortable” about him - when he asks if they are friends, that is. It’s something Mondo had to tell him because Makoto was too polite to and no one else liked him enough to be honest. At least those two didn’t seem to mind when he posed the question to them.

But it was so hard to _know_ , for certain, when he’d spent so much time thinking he had friends only to have the assumption thrown back in his face. One peer had actually gone so far as to parrot back at him something she’d heard her father say: _When you assume you make an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me’_. A vulgar expression, but it certainly stuck.

“Hey, Taka...Are you okay?” He hadn’t noticed anyone come up and join him, but Hina's sitting across from him now, eyes going between his expression and his fork. “You’re kinda torturing the plate.”

“And the rest of the dining hall!” someone he doesn’t see shouts.

Unsurprisingly, the unsolicited comment doesn’t alleviate his irritation, and without really thinking about it he starts tapping the bottom of his plate with his fork again. Hina lets it go on for a couple more seconds before she pounces, jerking the fork out of Taka’s hands. “Seriously! What is up with you?”

Unfortunately for Hina, and probably for everyone else, Taka’s overwhelming urge to poke at something drives on, and he starts tapping on the table with his nails. He really is trying to think of a way to answer Hina’s question, but every attempt to pre-script the conversation in his head before the words leave his mouth meets a roadblock.

People don’t seem to get this, so even though Hina seems to actually be patient in her request for a response, Taka rushes himself and winds up blurting out, “How do you know when someone is flirting with you?” She looks taken aback. “Not you. I have not misconstrued this conversation as anything other than polite inquiry. But that is. What is on my mind.”

He huffs, and stares at the edge of the table. This is so ridiculous – she'll probably think he’s weird, now. He fully expects her to not answer the question.

But he does hear a soft snort, and that makes him look back to her. She looks amused, but in a different way than Leon had earlier. “Is someone flirting with you, Taka?”

“I don’t know,” he says, irritably. “Why are you laughing at me?”

He hadn’t meant to say the ‘at me’ bit, and she looks a little guilty. “It’s not at you. Sorry. I just – I don’t think I’ve ever seen you flustered before. It’s kind of adorable.” She raises her hands, fork still clasped in one. “Not that I’m flirting. It’s just...new.”

“Is that the kind of thing someone would say if they were flirting? Theoretically.”

“Well, it kind of depends on the person,” she says, setting his fork down on the table and focusing on her own food. “Some girls like to take a direct approach -”

“It’s not a girl.”

For the second time in the past five minutes, she looks startled. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a boy.” He pauses, bringing his fingers to his mouth and leaning on the table. “Well, hypothetically.”

“I -” she blinks a couple of times. “Uhm. You...You didn’t say it was a boy.”

“I don't believe I said it was a girl.” He can’t really determine the expression on her face, can’t even hazard a guess at what she’s thinking. So he tries to follow what a logical follow-up might be, and asks, “Does that change things?”

Hina looks around them, and scoots closer to where he is, muttering, “I don’t know. I’ve never flirted with a boy.”

He feels like there’s some sort of gravity to this he should be getting, but he doesn’t really know where. He only knows that he feels slightly better. “May I have my fork back now?”

“Yeah, sure.” She hands the fork off to him. There’s a kind of blush in her cheeks. “Well, I think...I think boys are kind of obvious about it, usually? But I don’t really know.” His confusion must be evident on his face, because she illustrates, hands waving around. “Like - they touch you a lot. In my experience, they’ll be more handsy with you. And some guys _really_ can’t take the hint that you’re not interested.”

He frowns. “Has that been happening? I do have sexual harassment forms in my room -”

“Not here,” she says, shaking her head. “But it happens a lot at swim meets. And they kinda frown upon you hitting the competition.”

He can’t help but find that unfair. “But not hitting _on_ the competition?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” she shouts.

That same unseen voice shouts back, “Get a room!”

They both look toward it this time, scowling.

Hina rolls her eyes, going back to her food. “Anyway. I guess if you had some examples of what he’s doing, I might be able to help you out?”

He thinks about it, trying to hold his stim in check. “I’d like to gather more evidence before I postulate, if that’s okay?”

“Yeah, sure!” she says. “Honestly, I’m just kinda happy I’m not the only one here who’s not straight.”

Was that what she’d looked so surprised about? Odd. But then, being an outcast has never really been fun, so on that he can agree, so he says, “Yes.”

* * *

He thinks that even without asking, he can probably consider Hina a friend now. Since she realized he wasn’t straight – and really, that was a little slow on the uptake, but perhaps her lack of interest in men meant she was less observational about them? - she seemed more interested in hanging out with him, chatting in the morning by his locker and asking for help on homework.

She’s not around this morning, however; she’s at a swim meet. One, apparently, with the annoying guy who didn’t understand the concept of personal space. He’d expressed his sympathies, and she said she’d cheer herself up by “eating her body weight in donuts.” And then, when he’d expressed concern for her diet, she rolled her eyes, though not in as irritated a manner as people usually did with him. “It’s an exaggeration, like, to make it funny. I’m not really going to eat that many donuts. I don’t think we even _have_ that many donuts.”

He thought about it for a moment. “So it’s a hyperbole?”

“High-per- Oh! Is _that_ how that’s pronounced?” she seemed to be writing it on her hand with her finger. “Yeah, that!”

Asides aside, this morning he finds Mondo on the other side of his locker door when he closes it.

“Hey,” he says, and then looks around them, eyes narrowed. “Hina’s not around, is she?”

“No.” Taka turns, trying to rest against his locker the way Mondo is. It’s not particularly comfortable, and he readjusts to in his normal posture, even if he’s been told before that it makes him look like a corpse. “Why? Did you need to speak to her?”

He scoffs. “No. She’s just -” He waves his hand around, distracting from the sneer that’s formed on his mouth. “I dunno. She’s been hangin’ around ya a lot recently.” He looks down at Taka. He appears...worried. “Did somethin’ like, happen between the two’a you?”

He’s relatively sure people only say that when they think a fight occurred, but he can’t figure out how Mondo would have gotten that impression from them spending more time together than they had before. “Er...Well, we realized we had more in common than we thought we did.”

That should be a suitable answer, but Mondo just looks annoyed by it. “So, what? Are you like, dating now or somethin’?”

 _What?_ “No! We are just friends. Hina’s -” He stops himself, right on the precipice of saying something else.

...Hm. It probably wasn’t appropriate to say that kind of thing, was it? Not without her permission. She seemed to regard it as a kind of secret, and it would be terrible of him to divulge something like that if, indeed, it was.

He’d have to ask her about it later. For now, he’ll have to backtrack a little. There must be something he can say instead, right? “...Not interested in me,” he says. Which is, technically, not a lie.

Despite his next words, Mondo looks relieved. “Oh. Well, ‘m sorry.”

Kiyotaka doesn’t really know how to react to that. He doesn’t particularly appreciate being lied to, but he feels again like he must be missing something here. Why would Mondo be sorry about this, and why would he say he was sorry if he wasn’t? It’s just weird.

Mondo doesn’t give him an opportunity to ask about it, dropping his arm around Taka’s shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, bro. You'll find someone who is. ‘M sure of it!”

“I’m not particularly worried about it.” The moment he says it, he’s hit with the bizarre feeling that he may have just lied.

It would be a strange thing to try and retract, and Mondo has moved on from the statement anyway. “Well, good, ‘cause you ain’t got any reason to be. An’ in the meantime, ya got me.”

Well, that kind of response probably negates any ideas he might have had about Mondo’s displeased reaction to Asahina’s presence being jealousy. Not that he was given much of a chance to even draw that conclusion, but if he thinks of himself as a ‘meantime’ that probably means he’s not interested. But at the same time – Asahina had said that men are more likely to show interest through touch, and Mondo _is_ touching him. Is it just some sort of...prompt? Is he hoping Taka will indicate his interest here?

There must be something he can say that can provoke a reaction in Mondo that will allow him to determine if this interaction is meant to be platonic. But how to phrase it? He’s never exactly studied flirting before, he’s never had reason to. Hina won’t be able to help him flirt with men, and she didn’t seem to think anyone else in school was gay... Makoto seems to know a lot about pop culture, so perhaps he’ll be able to refer something to Kiyotaka, to use as a guide.

Speaking of that meantime – Mondo is looking at him like he expects him to say something, and Taka’s not sure what kind of counter he’s looking for. It’s something he should give himself time to think about, but - “There’s nothing _meantime_ about it!”

_What does that even mean?! Kiyotaka, you idiot!_

“Hell yeah! You’re right!” Mondo’s arm moves from his shoulders to Taka’s head, ruffling his hair. Once again, he’s left with no idea as to how Mondo managed to interpret things he’s said that even he doesn’t understand, much less what kind of message he got out of it. “We’re gonna be best friends forever, right bro?”

Ah. There it is. Taka would frown at him, but as they’ve reached their next class and he’s decided to walk in ahead of Kiyotaka, the most he can do is frown at the back of Mondo’s jacket.

* * *

Kiyotaka is starting to wonder what it is, exactly, he’s been doing wrong. He sits in the cafeteria, a book in one hand, not really paying attention to it or his food, mind still fixated on the last conversation he had with Mondo. He needs to try and use this time for studying as he eats, but he can’t stop himself from reflecting back to the day he befriended Mondo in an effort to understand what it is he could have possibly done to give his friend the impression that he’s heterosexual.

Actually, for that matter, he can’t think of anything he might have done or said before that point that would have implied it, either. Though the more that he interacts with his peers, the more his social skills expand, the more he understands why everyone seems to think he’s stupid.

It might come as a shock to a good number of his peers, but Kiyotaka Ishimaru is actually well aware that fourteen out of fifteen of his classmates think he’s an idiot. He had been, at one point, scoring one hundred percent on that front, but when he befriended Oowada the opinion had been downgraded to “naive, oblivious.” Taka, for his part, refused to have such a low opinion of the people he was supposed to be able to call his friends, even if Hagakure was auditioning spectacularly well for it.

One thing he can say for his poor reputation, as well as his awareness of it, is that it means he can embrace all forms of inane jesting at his expense with a confidence he hopes is unsettling. Like with Leon and that stupid comic.

He doesn’t really have time to go back over a year’s worth of interactions, but there is one that does stick out to him particularly. He doesn’t quite recall what brought it up, only that Mondo had gotten into a snit over something and claimed that people didn’t do something-or-other because they were all afraid of him.

To which Taka replied, “I don’t think anyone finds you frightening, Oowada.” He’d said it because at age sixteen he had reached what Leon refers to as _peak dumbassary_ , and he thought (and to a degree, still thinks) that surely, no one wants to be found scary.

Mondo reacted by rounding on him, looking very much like a wild dog trying to corner some prey it’s hunting, and someone in the back shouted at him, “Are you high? Don’t provoke him!”

It might have irritated Mondo in the moment, but it was absolutely the truth: Ishimaru doesn’t, and never has, considered him frightening in the least. So even with Mondo trying to use his height to his advantage, Taka more or less ignored him, and responded to the errant question. “No, I am not high.”

It’s fortunate, in the long run, that Mondo forgets about whoever he’d been shouting at. He took Kiyotaka’s assertion as insult, and said, “Oh yeah? Well if you’re so fuckin’ tough why don’t you challenge me?”

“Gladly!” he’d replied.

There'd been a lot of shouting, which was par for the course with them. They’d roped Naegi into supervising their challenge, which was just – utterly ridiculous, in hindsight. Seeing which one of them could last longer in the sauna was hardly a defining feature of masculinity or anything else, and it had been truly moronic on Taka’s part to agree to it when he knew he got easily overheated.

...what was that he’d thought, about not being a spiteful person? He’d have to re-examine that.

It was too late to take the whole thing back now, and he wouldn’t anyway. He'd connected more with Mondo that night than he’d ever connected with anyone before. He wasn’t even sure he’d ever held a conversation that long before.

He didn’t win the competition. He had, in fact, forgotten all about it. He vaguely remembers blacking out, and coming to, and Mondo looking somehow altogether different than he had an hour or two, however long they’d been in there, prior. His hair was coming undone and whatever makeup he had on around his eyes was smeared.

He’d sighed when Taka’s eyes came into focus. He could feel Mondo’s hand on his cheek.

And then he realized Mondo had taken off his jacket, and he was forced to confront what was probably the real reason he’d let the biker antagonize him so much.

“Was afraid I was gonna have to administer CPR,” he said.

Taka blinked, trying not to stare at his new friend’s arms too much, and said, “That would have been dangerous if you aren’t certified.”

He kicked himself, mentally. It was a pretty ungrateful statement to make to someone who had probably just saved your life and who you had, overall, just decided to become friends with. But if Mondo found it rude, he didn’t mention it, rolling his eyes much like Hina had when she explained the hyperbole to him. “’Course I’m certified. Ya gotta know shit like First Aid if you’re gonna run a fuckin’ gang.”

He hadn’t even thought of that, at any point in time. He hadn’t put much consideration into what actual skills might go into the talents his classmates were at the school for, only taking them at face value. It seemed obvious, now, that Mondo must actually be able to keep a gang together by leading it, and not just by being the coolest or senior member.

Taka tried to force his mind to form the words around an apology, but they wouldn’t come. So he wound up asking, “Where’s your jacket?”

“Under yer feet.”

It felt weird, to hear him say that. He couldn’t place why at the time, but upon reflection: the idea that Mondo had used something of value to him to help Kiyotaka out, as if he mattered more. And that probably didn’t occur to Mondo. It probably still doesn’t. But it’s probably the point where Taka first started to run laps around himself.

Mondo only sat down and moved Taka’s feet to his lap. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

Taka managed, for the first time, to refrain from pointing out that technically, he just had. “Anything.”

“Why did you tell people you didn’t think I was scary?” 

Taka looked at him, worn down, and tried to figure out what kind of a response he was looking for. People rarely asked him why with an intent to know the actual answer. It made answering things, and conversing in general so hard for him. But Mondo didn’t look like he had any particular expectations, so Taka swallowed through the dryness in his throat and replied. “Because I didn’t think anyone would want to be told that they were,” he said, “And to me, you are not. You never have been.”

“Alright. But why?”

Taka wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “I’m sorry?”

“Why don’t you find me scary? I intimidate the shit outta everyone else ‘round here. Why dinnit ever work on you?”

In sixteen years of attempting to form a meaningful relationship with anybody, of trying to make friends and failing every time, of not even being able to get his classmates to stand him, no one had ever once asked him a follow-up question. He’d offered them in long run-on sentences that made them weary and annoyed, reminded not only by his peers but his teachers and his own parents that people didn’t tend to want to a detailed explanation about his thought processes.

Taka’s never scripted out the full thing before.

So he did what he always does in those situations, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “You like dogs.”

“Lots of people like dogs,” Mondo replied.

“Yes. But you remind me of one.”

He blinked at him. “How?” Taka licked his lips, and stared at the ceiling of the dressing room to keep from looking at Mondo. Knowing he was being watched was making him nervous. “Are you pre-scriptin' this?”

“Yes,” he admitted, and kind of had to look at Mondo at that point in time. He looked... _fond_. “How did you know?”

“You always kinda talk like ya scripted it out in yer head first.”

“I do usually script things I say in advance. People won’t talk to me if I don’t.”

What had been something like a smile sort of crumbled, and it looked like Mondo was biting his cheek to keep from looking too sad about it. “Well, just say whatever comes to mind. Ain’t like it matters, ‘s just me. And we’re friends now, right?”

He couldn’t help the feeling that it could all be some sort of trap, but if Mondo was going to insist, as some sort of way to strengthen the bond of their friendship, then he could at least try. “Some breeds of dogs get bad reputations because of the way they have been bred for things like fights and security. Like, Rottweilers, Dobermans, Pit Bulls. And I think it would be terribly sad, to be that kind of dog, and have people assume from the look of me that I’m not worthy of companionship because of what my environment has made me.”

Mondo wasn’t replying, so he had to look back. And it was there again, something about his face looking very soft, and Taka’s heart sped up. It all felt too intense, and he remembered reading somewhere that people often tried to break tension with humor. He hadn’t made this kind of a connection before, and couldn’t place at the time if he’d managed to make Mondo uncomfortable with the things he was saying.

So he said, “Plus, your hair reminds me of a poodle.”

Mondo snorted and smacked his leg. “My hair’s better’n a poodle’s. It’d be rad if people styled their dog’s hair like mine, instead of that weird half-shaved ball shit.”

Taka rolled his eyes. It felt nice, to not be on the receiving end of it. “I meant because it’s curly.” Mondo hummed. “And you act like a puppy when you get excited.”

“Chihiro said the same thing,” he said, smirking. “Said she’d never seen a human so close to wagging a tail they don’t have.”

“And you obviously lack discipline.”

“Hey -”

“Explain to me and the vending machine where I’m wrong.” Mondo stuck his tongue out. “I thought so,” he smirked. And then, before he could stop himself, he said, “I feel like a dog a lot, too.”

He let it hang there in the silence for a minute, before Mondo nudged his foot. “You wanna expand on that a lil’?”

His fingers twisted in knots over his stomach as he thought about how to explain it best to someone else, as clearly as it felt in his head. “It’s like I have a limited range of understanding the people around me, and what I understand best is ‘good dog’ and ‘bad dog’. I don’t understand anyone else’s internal logic. I _can’t_. And most of what I hear is just the word ’dog,’ said in a variety of voices whose emotions I can’t fathom.”

Mondo was quiet for a moment. He wasn’t sure if it was something else that needed expanding on, or if by mentioning the invisible wall he’d managed to push yet another person away. He felt everything in his chest get unbearably tight until Mondo said, “If I’m like a Pit Bull or a Doberman, I think yer like...a Border Collie. Or maybe a Shetland Sheepdog.”

“What makes you say that?” he asked, trying to hold onto any thread of conversation.

“They’re smart, n’ hard workin’, an’ anxious as hell.”

“Don’t they also talk a lot?” Taka asked.

Mondo flicked him. “Hey, I’m tryin’a pay you a compliment. Don’t over-think it.” He shifted. “You good to stand up? We should prolly get outta here, we’re breaking curfew.” 

Taka hissed something not quite an expletive at himself and rushed to sit up.

“Hey, woah, bro, don’t knock yerself out,” Mondo said, putting his hand on Taka’s shoulder. The contact felt nice, and somehow that made him feel worse. “Ain’t like we’re gonna get in more trouble the later we’re out. ‘Sides, yer the only one who keeps that rule. Can’t ya just forget about it?”

“No!” he snapped. “That would be an abuse of power -!”

He had to stop himself for a second, wondering if he was just hopeless when it came to really making friends and keeping them, like any little thing he might do could push Mondo away. But Mondo had only said “At least you stick to yer morals” and let him get dressed.

Before they parted for the night at their respective doors, each with a detention slip, Mondo asked, “Anything else about me remind you of a dog?”

And Kiyotaka, truly too exhausted to filter his words, said, “You’re both cute.”

* * *

No. There was no way Mondo could have heard those words, and thought he meant them in a familial way. Either his reiteration of brother-shortened-to-bro was an attempt to let Taka down easy, or he hadn’t heard Taka’s response. But to think Taka could possess romantic feelings for Hina -

Unless Mondo thought he was bisexual. There was a certain logic to that assumption, asses aside. It only made logical sense for first impressions of your peers to start either in the middle of the Kinsey scale, or off it completely. If it was off, you could place them on it once you gathered more information; if they started in the middle, you could slide them on the scale as need be. So he could have registered Kiyotaka’s interest in him, and then registered his the increased amount of time he spent with Asahina as a slide further to the middle, reading it as an expression of opposite sex attraction. Of course, many more studies have been done since then leaving the scale lacking, as understanding of nuanced concepts such as gender and sexuality -

“Hello there, Ishimaru. Can I talk to you for a second?”

It took a moment for Kiyotaka to blink out of the mental world he’d put himself in to remember contest, morphed into an office of notes from past research and jerked quite suddenly back out again. So he is sitting in the dining hall now with Sakura on one end of the table and the headmaster in front of him.

He scrambles gracelessly from his seat to try and greet the headmaster properly. He thinks he can hear Sakura hum in amusement, much more pleasant than the sharp eye-rolls he sees in his periphery vision from other students. “You really didn’t need to get up – I just wanted to ask if you could do me a favor.”

* * *

The ‘favor’ is to find Gundham Tanaka in the grade above, and explain to him that even with a talent as important and unique as his, he really couldn’t go around writing sigils on half the desks and bathroom stalls in permanent marker. Not that Kiyotaka minded being given such a task and, in fact, was flattered to be so highly regarded by the staff, but he did have to ask, “Wouldn’t the class representative of that year be more efficient as a messenger?”

The headmaster had scratched the back of his head at that, and pulled some kind of face that Kiyotaka had been told by Hifumi meant ‘sheepish.’ An expression he was sure was entirely fictional, until this moment. “Well, to be honest with you, Ishimaru, the other classes don’t have representatives.”

He balked.

His confusion didn’t need verbal form, since Kirigiri answered its follow-up regardless. “Hope’s Peak is _different_ from other schools,” he said, as if Kiyotaka had somehow managed to miss that information in context despite his occupation as, you know, a student there. “We don’t really have class representatives – not unless the classes themselves decide to appoint one, or a student’s talent happens to reside in that area.”

He had to bite his tongue hard to keep from shooting out a rather acidic opinion that this was why class attendance was abysmally low. The teachers seemed to often comment on the regularity with which Kiyotaka’s classmates actually came to class, and now that made sense. The last person with a talent anywhere approaching Ishimaru’s had been Munakata, and he’d graduated nearly three years ago.

So Kiyotaka is in the dining hall now, having spent the last hour and a half searching for the missing breeder, and not looking forward to the unfortunate Plan C he was having to enact in order to complete the task he’d been assigned: just going up and asking somebody.

...Oh, alright, he knows it’s ridiculous. He wants to be Prime Minister, can’t he handle talking to some people? He can, yes, but it doesn’t mean he _likes_ to. Talking to them one-on-one isn’t such a big problem. Even talking to strangers, while daunting at times, is something he can manage. But if he’s ever felt talked down to by his peers in his own class, it’s really no comparison to how the students in the grade above regard him.

He can’t put his finger on it. They just scare him.

He is saved by the movement of silver braids going by and follows it, approaching one table with a little less apprehension than he’d had a moment earlier. But as soon as he opens his mouth, Kuzuryu snaps at him, “Fuck off.”

Peko frowns at him, utensils paused in hand. “Give him a break, master,” she says. Then, turning to Taka she asks, “What do you need?”

“The Headmaster sent me to give Tanaka detention, but I haven’t been able to find him,” Taka says, trying to avoid making eye contact with the student still staring at him.

But Kuzuryu, it seems, doesn’t like to be ignored. “Why don’t you just call him Gundham?” he asks. And he sounds angry as he says it, but he doesn’t really look all that angry. Kiyotaka doesn’t really get what he has to be upset about, but it must just be something that he does, because Peko's expression doesn’t change.

“Because he asked me not to,” Taka explains.

“He actually asked you not to?”

He seems oddly confused. Kiyotaka wonders for the second time that week why people think he’s the socially inept one. “Yes. It’s understandable, he is older than me -”

“Not that,” Fuyuhiko snaps, but waving his hand like it doesn’t really matter. “I mean, I can’t imagine him actually saying the words ‘Please don’t call me that.’ He always talks so weirdly, I’d think he’d say something like, ‘How dare a mere mortal breathe the name of Gundham Tanaka -’”

“That’s almost exactly what he said,” Kiyotaka interrupts.

Fuyuhiko just blinks at him. “And...you understood _that?_ ”

...Ah. He thinks he’s seeing what the confusion is. “Yes,” he says, and before Fuyuhiko can follow it up, he adds, “No, I don’t know why it’s easier to understand him than the rest of your class, or mine.”

“Heh. Maybe your brain’s wired different like his is.” He shrugs, leaning back in his seat. “Peko can do that, too.”

“I have heard it suggested that Autism runs in families,” Peko says.

Fuyuhiko blinks, confused. “Wait...Ishimaru and Gundham are related?”

They both look at him. “Not as far as I’m aware,” Taka says.

“I mean Taka and I,” Peko clarifies.

“You’re _related?_ ”

“We’re cousins.” She seems to be getting some enjoyment out of this, like he did with Leon and that stupid internet comic. “I thought you knew, master.”

“No I -” his face is so bright pink now, the same way Mondo’s gets when he’s flustered. “I didn’t, and I told you, quit calling me that.”

“But aren’t you her superior?” Taka asks, wondering even as he talks if he’s crossing some sort of social boundary by bringing it up. “Not here at school, but in the occupation of your...er, talent?”

“Well I don’t like thinking of it that way!” he shouts. “Besides, it’s - it’s embarrassing! People think we’re - _You know!_ ” Except the way they both look at him, he dons a look of horror. “You- do you guys really not know?”

“Know what, master?”

“ _They think we’re into some weird kinky BDSM shit!_ ” 

Ishimaru feels as horrified as Fuyuhiko looks, but Peko just seems further amused by the revelation. “Is that why you have an issue with it?”

“It’s not the only reason,” he grumbles, stabbing his poor salad with his fork and looking at anything that isn’t the two cousins. “It’s like – you know – you're not just a tool to me, you’re my girlfriend and I love you -”

“You’re flustered,” she says.

“Shut up!” he hisses.

Peko shakes her head, and looks back to Kiyotaka, ignoring whatever it is her partner is muttering under his breath. “I think he went to pick up supplies from the pet store. One of the birds he’s taken into his care only eats a specific brand of food, so if he’s not in his room he’s probably out looking for it.”

* * *

He manages to catch Tanaka on his way back into the school, but it doesn’t matter much. He says he’s not the one drawing sigils on the desks, and when Taka shows him photographic evidence of the sigils, he explains that it couldn’t possibly have been him because he is “not foolish enough to believe such mortal instruments could summon one so great as Baphomet,” and also that he “has no need of his service.” In other words, he wouldn’t use a permanent marker for the drawings, nor would he draw them like that.

(Sonia, who had gone with him, holds back to tell Kiyotaka, “It’s probably Kazuichi,” and asks him if there‘s any way he can disallow the man in question from attempting to make copies of her dorm room key.)

He knows the next step he should be taking is finding Souda and telling him off, but he’s a little irritated and worn out from the run around and figures that sending the headmaster an e-mail should be enough for the day. Especially given the implication that one student was attempting to frame another, and with the additional complaint of the older student’s attempts at sexual harassment.

Honestly. What is _with_ straight men?

He’s not expecting anyone to be waiting for him when he heads to his locker to get his notebooks out. If he expects anything, it’s some variation on the normal conversation, some classmate or other gently explaining to him that he doesn’t need to study on Friday evenings because nobody else is and he should just take time to “relax”, as if the methods of such weren’t inherently subjective.

But this moment of much-needed privacy is interrupted by someone who was, apparently, waiting on him to return from his fruitless mission. Mondo chooses to greet him by slamming his forehead against the locker next to him, in what Kiyotaka assumes is a statement of frustration. And Taka responds to that unwarranted irritation with a “Hello” that he hopes does not sound as amused or endeared at the sight as he feels, his own annoyance momentarily diverted.

He means to back up his hello with something else, but when he shuts his locker and turns to face Mondo, he sees the pompadour coming undone, hair in falling curls against the metal and the words stick to the roof of his mouth, suddenly dehydrated. Mondo’s eyeliner is smudged and his lips are pressed against the door, not quite as smushed as his nose or his hair and everything looks so soft and touchable, and when Mondo actually looks at him from the corner of his eye Taka swallows and it’s audible. It is, of course, impossible to see his heart beating against the fabric of his shirt, to say nothing of the jacket over top, but the way it races...

Mondo sighs, and Kiyotaka’s eyes follow his lips parting to allow the noise to escape. “Just struck out a twelfth time,” he says. His voice is so low Kiyotaka imagines he can feel it through the floor. He’s so distracted he forgets to be disappointed by the implication, watching the low cut of his tank top jostle as he turns, rolling his shoulders to hit against the locker first in a slouch that makes his chest stand out. Kiyotaka watches, and fixates somewhere on his collar bones, thinking to himself, _I wonder how hard I’d have to bite to leave a mark_.

He slaps his hand with his notebook to try and get his mind out of the darn gutter, because if it descends any further he’s going to have to find something to cover the lower half of his body or sprint back to his room with a lousy explanation on his lips ( _instead of his lips on your lips don’t think about that don’t think about that!_ ) or at least open his locker again and pretend to be looking for something until Mondo leaves.

But Mondo’s too distraught to notice what must be a really obvious blush on his face. His eyes look up to the ceiling and he moans, “Kyoudai,” which should be illegal, and then “I don’t get what it is I’m doin’ wrong.”

It’s funny in an unfunny way that Kiyotaka had asked himself the same thing earlier that day.

“Yanno,” Mondo continues. “You’d think by now, we been here over a year already, right?”

“Correct,” Taka says.

“Ya’d think they’d get I ain’t always mad when I’m yellin’. Like, I ain’t tryin’a hurt nobody, I just yell when I get nervous.” He knows Mondo’s not really looking for advice, least of all from him. It’s taken time for Kiyotaka to realize the cathartic power of venting, but he’s starting to get the hang of just listening for the sake of support.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s just filler, because this sounds like a place where he’s supposed to say something, and he can apologize for the situation at hand even if he did nothing to bring it to this point. Sometimes, the filler words don’t work the way they’re supposed to, and Mondo growls at him that it isn’t his fault, like he’s angry at Kiyotaka for trying to voice his sympathy. On those days he paces, he throws his hands in the air and he swears in darker tones, not directed at anyone or anything. Sometimes he vents his frustrations by dragging Kiyotaka to the gym or the pool or the weights room so he doesn’t have to be alone in his anger.

And then sometimes, he does this. He’s been tugging at the curls on his head, picking them out of their place to worry at them, put he stops about half way so he can turn with his whole body facing Taka’s and he just sort of drops on him, like all his strength has gone out at once. He’s heavy – over six feet tall and almost entirely muscle – but it feels nice, it feels comforting to be crushed like this. Even outside the contexts of their proximity as friends, how he smells, his skin on Kiyotaka’s and rise and fall of his chest as he breathes – sometimes when Taka’s alone in his room and overwhelmed, he thinks about how good the weight would feel on him, to hold him down. Safe, and unmoving.

Mondo doesn’t really let people touch his hair, even in the back where it falls straight against his neck. But Kiyotaka does now, unthinking, curling the strands around his fingers, not quite tight enough to pinch. “They just don’t understand _you_ ,” he says, meaning _not like I do_. Mondo sighs, the breath from his nose tickling the back of Kiyotaka’s neck.

What would it feel like if he didn’t have the jacket on, if it didn’t come up so high on his neck? Would he feel Mondo’s lips against his neck?

Mondo pulls back enough that his whole body isn’t supported by Taka’s, but not so far that Taka’s hands fall from his hair. “Whaddaya think I should do?” he asks.

The words come out of him before he really thinks about it. “Maybe you should just try looking closer to home.”

He does pull back farther this time, looking at Kiyotaka with flustered confusion. “Huh? Wh- What d’you mean?”

He could just about smack himself in his own stupidity, but if he’s going to say something bold he should at least say it with dignity. So he looks Mondo in the eyes, unwavering, and says, “Maybe you should try narrowing your search to people who know you.” _Like I do_.

Mondo looks at him – he doesn’t know how. Like he’s just said something weird, he guesses, or like he’s said something really scary. Although he’s pretty sure in the grand scheme of things, this is one of the less strange things Kiyotaka has ever said, and as a byproduct, also probably one of the less frightening things. He laughs a little, like he’s nervous, hand going to the back of his head like it does when he’s shy about something. “Right,” he says, mouth half open when his eyes finally lock back on to Taka’s.

But they’re not actually alone in the room, and Makoto drops something and makes a mess of the floor with his papers and Mondo panics, or something, shouting “I’LL THINK ABOUT IT!” and running from where, tripping over excuses to make his escape.

Taka can’t help but sigh, although he can’t identify what brings on the urge. “That was odd, wasn’t it?” he asks.

Makoto takes a brief second to look up at him from his position on the floor before he goes back to all the papers he’s dropped. "Uhm, Taka...” Makoto says carefully, which is how everyone seems to talk to him nowadays.

And frankly, he’s sick of it. Whatever kind of quiet, pining mood Kiyotaka had been in not three seconds prior is ripped away, setting his face into a scowl where he looks at his classmate. “Yes, what?” he says, mouth full of acid.

“Well, when you say things like that – like, what you just said to Mondo -” He watches color build up in Makoto’s neck, rolling up his face like ink, from splotchy pink into shining red at the tips of his ears. He must be able to tell how testy Ishimaru is feeling, and takes a breath to steady himself, and say it all in one go. “When you say things like that, people are going to think you’re flirting with him.”

It’s very lucky for the pencil in Taka’s unoccupied hand that he has trained in self-discipline, otherwise the feeble stick of wood-encased graphite would snap under his fingers. As it is, he has to control the sudden urge he has to toss it against the wall. Knowing Makoto’s luck, it would only rebound and stab one of them in the eye. “I have been for over a year, thank you _somebody_ for finally noticing.”

Makoto stares up at him, eyes wide, and drops the folder he’s just managed to put back together, spilling the papers once more. Taka sighs again, more of a groan this time as he figures Makoto is totally helpless in this endeavor. “Taka. Uhm -”

“Out with it,” he says.

“Are you – are you saying you’re gay?” He has to bite back down the words _Not you too!_ , but his face must show something of his negativity because Makoto is quick to wave his hands around in pointless gesture, saying ”Not that it’s a bad thing!” and “I still see you the same way!” and “I won’t tell anybody!”

“Why would you need to tell anybody?” Taka asks. “Surely it’s obvious.”

Makoto shakes his head.

Kiyotaka sighs, and tries to temper his voice into something a little less frustrated and a little more curious. “Makoto. Have you ever known me to express romantic or sexual interest in a woman? Or, for that matter, any nonbinary person?”

“Well, no,” he says slowly. “But I hadn’t really... Er... I didn’t think – With you being the Moral Compass -”

“You just assumed,” he says flatly, “That being heterosexual was normal, and anything apart from that was aberrant?”

“Taka, no -”

“Because clearly, I can’t have morals if I’m _gay_ , correct? With all my other issues and hang-ups, at least there was one thing keeping me from being a complete _freak_ , right?” Makoto tries to say his name, but he almost looks frightened to. “Because why wouldn’t everyone just be _normal_ and _straight_ like you?”

“I’m not straight either,” he snaps.

He won’t pretend that it comes with no shock, but for once he has the upper hand, and it almost feels too good to let it go. “Gee, Makoto, did that annoy you? That I would assume something about you with _absolutely no evidence?_ ”

He feels guilty immediately after saying it, and not just because Makoto looks so close to tears. He shuts his mouth so hard his teeth click and ache, and he realizes there’s snot coming out of his nose. He’s crying, too.

“You’re right,” Makoto says. “I don’t like it when people assume things about me. And I shouldn’t have just assumed that about you, either. That was...hypocritical of me.”

Taka sniffs, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “No, I apologize. I shouldn’t have taken my frustration with Mondo out on you. It was unfair.”

Makoto laughs with no joy behind it. “Let’s just both agree, we were kind of jerks, alright? But I forgive you.”

“I forgive you, too.” Taka kneels down again, trying to push the papers into some semblance of an order, handing what he manages to collect back to Makoto. They stand for a couple minutes, not talking, and both decide to walk in silence to the computer lab.

After a couple minutes, their way clear of schoolmates, Makoto says, “So... You and Mondo?”

Kiyotaka thinks about snorting derisively, but it’s not a good idea with his recent outburst and it only makes him think of Togami. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere,” he says.

“I don’t know. He looked pretty interested until I dropped all my crap and startled him. I’m sorry about that, by the way -” Sheepish, again, but he buys it more on Makoto than he did on the headmaster. “I was trying not to bother you guys, but I’m late on this assignment -”

“The one for English? Would you like any help?”

“We-well,” he looks down at his destroyed folder and the books in his hands, surprised. “If you’re not too busy -”

“I just have one e-mail to send. I was only going to study, anyway.”

“I don’t want to distract -”

“I _need_ a distraction,” he says, voice almost whiny. He feels himself blushing again, less positive and somewhat ashamed. “And that’s...what I do best.”

Makoto gives him another look he’ll have to try and sketch out some day and ask what it means. In a way it reminds him of the look Hina gave him when she realized she understood him better than she thought she did. And maybe that’s what’s happening here, too, Makoto trying to hold open the door when Ishimaru is the one with less busy hands.

* * *

Makoto’s assignment doesn’t take long to finish up, and with most of their other classmates otherwise occupied he decides to spend his free time with Kiyotaka, of all people, even knowing he just plans on studying for the rest of the evening. Not only that, but he actually spends that time studying himself, although his methods are disorganized and woefully out of date.

Well, whatever works.

Then, at the end of the night, he asks Kiyotaka, “Are you doing anything tomorrow?” They’re both much calmer now, but Kiyotaka’s eyes still fix on the destroyed folder Makoto has tried to piece back together with duct tape.

He could probably get a new one from the school store. They weren’t terribly expensive, and they were much sturdier than this one. But Makoto got some sort of humor out of taping it up just to see how long it would last. He said he’d replace it if the spine went completely out. Even with all of its tears, it was still keeping his work safe.

It was strange. Taka didn’t understand it. But he appreciated it, all the same. “I’m going to do some swimming exercises with Hina! She has some critiques for my form, and she needs me to check her time.”

“Huh, alright. I’ll see you guys at lunch, then!” he said, and waved goodbye, heading to his own room.

And then, just like Hina had, Makoto inserts himself into Kiyotaka’s expanding friendship circle. Like some sort of gay magnet. Makoto would be off doing his own thing, and slowly gravitate back to where Taka was.

He didn’t just join Taka and Hina for lunch, but managed to convince them both (well, Taka; Hina needed no convincing) to go to the movies, paying for Taka and waving off his embarrassment at the lack of funds. “They’re second run,” Makoto said. “So they’re discounted.” He tried to pat Kiyotaka on the back, awkward because of the height difference, and Hina laughed at the way he stood on his toes. “Really, this was just to thank you for coming with us. I just wanted to get away from...everybody else,” he says, sighing.

Taka wonders if Makoto knows about Hina, and if Hina knows about Makoto, and if Makoto is quiet about whatever his non-straight sexuality is like Hina. He knows he’s not supposed to ask about it, but it’s still tapping on his mind and he’s not that good at keeping his questions or comments to himself.

As it happens, he doesn’t have to ask. They get back to campus late enough for no one to still be in the dining hall, and just sort of...loiter in there, hanging out at one of the tables with soda and junk food and it...

Feels _fun_. He always has the underlying feeling of anxiety and discomfort, but it feels a little less pronounced like this.

Makoto stretches his arms of his head and drops them to the table, leaning forward. “So, Taka, did you have a favorite character?”

They haven’t exactly asked him what he thought of the movie, yet. He wonders if they just forgot, or if it’s too sensitive a topic to bring up. He hums, fingers drumming on the edge of the table while he thinks. “Well... Vision seems nice? And, er...” He feels the weight of them staring like it’s more than just two people, face getting hot. “I- Iron Man’s friend? I -” He swallows, and it feels a little like his throat is closing up. “I have to confess I haven’t seen any of the movies leading up to this, so I was a little lost on what was going on.”

“Ugh, yeah,” Hina says rolling her eyes. “I kinda wish they’d stop doing that. Like, I get they’re trying to build a brand here, but jeeze! Who has the money to see them all?”

“Or the interest?” Makoto chimes in, tipping his can of soda back into his mouth. “The Ant Man movie was okay, but _Doctor Strange_ just looked bad.”

“Which ones were they?” Taka asks, willing his emotions to stay in check for five freaking minutes, please -

“Ant Man’s the one who gets big,” Hina says, illustrating with her hands. “I don’t think Doctor Strange was in this one, right? But he’s in the new Thor movie, I think?” she looks to Makoto for confirmation as he nods, and back to Taka. “Thor wasn‘t in the movie, either, but he’s -”

“I know him!” Taka says. Even to his own ears, he sounds way too excited to recognize a character so obvious. “Or, at least, I recognize him. Is he a god in the, uh, movies, too?”

“Sort of?” Makoto says, ruffling his hair. “It’s not really clear. He might be an alien.”

“Don’t worry about his movies,” Hina says, “They’re not that good.”

“Okay, that is not fair,” Makoto says, pointing. “ _Dark World_ wasn’t great, but _Ragnarok_ was awesome! And the first one was okay -”

“ _Ragnarok_ I’ll give you, but you just think the first one is good ‘cause you’ve got the hots for Chris Hemsworth.” Makoto makes a choking noise, flaring up. “See? My point exactly.”

“So is Thor your favorite, then?” Taka asks, for lack of a better entrance back into the conversation.

“Probably,” Makoto says. “I like Cap, too.”

“And who’s your favorite?” he asks, turning to Hina.

“Captain Marvel.” She sighs, her face in her hands. “She wasn’t in this one, either, but she’s gonna be in _Endgame_. So for this movie... I guess Scarlet Witch. That’s Wanda,” she says. “She’s been through a lot and she always powers through.” Her attention turns from Taka to Makoto, eyebrows raised. “Dare we ask the question?”

Makoto nods, and looks back to Taka. “So... Who do you think was right? Steve, or Tony?”

He knows it’s probably not the only reason he was invited, but it gives him a sort of confidence to think they specifically wanted his opinion on the topic. “I might be missing something,” he starts. “So if there’s anything you think I should take into account, feel free to stop me.” They nod. He leans against the table, finger on his lips. “I can see both of their points, I suppose. I certainly do think that they need to be more careful to prevent civilians getting killed! But Stark’s investment in the Accords seemed...flimsy. I don’t know if that’s what they intended for the character, but I was confused about his motives. And he seemed to completely forget about the Accords altogether when they decided to fight in the airport.” He huffs. “Also, there is no way that prison at the end abides by the laws of the Geneva Convention. I didn’t see anyone tending to the wounds of the captured, which has been in place since at least 1906. There was definitely no humane or compassionate treatment, which was established as necessary in 1929 -”

“Is there anything about children in the, uh, protocols?” Makoto asks.

“Er...well, I don‘t have them on hand. But I would think no one should have to establish that adults fighting against children is wrong.” _Although, Mukuro..._ “Why?”

“Because Spider-man is fourteen,” Makoto says. 

“That’s different!” Hina says. “He has super-powers!”

“Which means the Accords would affect him, as well...” Taka presses his fingers against his lips, pushing against his teeth. “Is that common, for this fictional universe?”

“Well, yeah, there’s the X-Men – oh, you don’t know, I guess -”

Makoto takes that as his cue to go on a very lengthy explanation of what he refers to as the “cinematic universe” and it’s all very dense and confusing. More than once Kiyotaka wonders if this is how other people feel when he talks about things he’s passionate about; like they’ve suddenly been dropped in the middle of a crowded shopping mall with no directions, trying to find their way out by following the sound of one voice in the midst of so much noise. Pushed and jostled and trying to keep up.

He doesn’t know how much time passes with Makoto and Hina trying to map out the timeline for him, or when, exactly, his focus starts to falter. He only realizes that he hasn’t retained a lot of what they’ve said when Hina shakes him gently, asking him, “Taka? You okay?”

He should say _yes_ because he is. There’s nothing physically wrong with him. But somehow, what comes out, is, “Why do you guys keep hanging out with me?” They look at each other, and then at him, confused. “You never really did before. Until now you all just talked to me like I’m stupid. I don’t understand what’s different, why you suddenly like me, or at least seem to.”

They answer at the same time, just saying “I’m sorry.” Makoto gestures to Hina with his hand, letting her go first.

“Well,” she says, “I can’t really speak for Makoto, but... It gets lonely being the only gay kid, you know? So when you said you liked guys I thought that maybe I should get to know you better, ‘cause like!” Her hands form into fists, bouncing up and down. “It’s the same feeling from being on a sports team! Unity and support!”

“Solidarity?” Taka asks.

“YEAH!” she shouts.

“Alright.” He looks at Makoto.

Makoto looks sheepish again. Maybe that’s just his default emotion. “Honestly, I just kinda thought you wanted to be left alone? You never really join in class group activities, the only person you really talk to is Mondo, so until we had that conversation yesterday -” More like, when Taka yelled at him. He finds he doesn’t mind the slight change in depiction. “I thought that was because you weren’t interested in making friends. Not because we maybe hadn’t been as...accommodating as we should have been.”

Taka doesn’t respond, because he has his own opinions on the matter, but without someone like Peko or Tanaka around to voice them to he’s not sure if he’s alone in the idea. But it feels a lot like he’s the one doing the accommodating when it comes to their class. When it comes to people in _general_ , actually, trying to change the way he thinks and reacts and interacts with the world around them so he minimizes the amount of harassment and ostracization he receives just for being different. Just for existing.

“That’s why I like Mondo so much,” he says, although he didn’t mean to say it out loud. Makoto and Hina lean in, like it’s practiced, telling him to go on. “He doesn’t seem to care very much that I’m weird, or don’t understand things the way everyone else does. He doesn’t get angry if he has to explain things to me, and if I say something wrong he just tells me...”

He feels like there’s something else, something more that he should be saying. Every word that comes to mind feels so shallow, and like always he finds himself lost to describe his own emotions. Even now, when it doesn’t really matter because they aren’t pressing, just supporting him.

But he still blurts out, “ _And he’s so cute,_ ” covering his mouth and his face in his hands as he burns up, his friends laughing.

* * *

He learns that Hina’s interested in Sakura, and Makoto’s interested in - of all people – Togami. He’s part of his first ever tandem shout, exclaiming alongside Hina, “Why?!” He thinks of the phrase _‘That’s rich, coming from you,’_ although nobody says it. Makoto sees things in Byakuya that nobody else does, including Toko in her imagination. It’s kind of like his interactions with Mondo, except that everyone’s warmed up to the biker by now, and vice versa. Byakuya seems to tolerate Makoto and, in limited quantities, Kyouko.

All in all, he has three friends now, and that makes his first friend act strange. Mondo’s insistent on taking up as much of Kiyotaka’s personal space as possible, pressing his body as close to Taka’s as he can manage.

For all of that...whatever it is he’s doing, he doesn’t really talk much, more grunting in response to questions when Hina or Makoto attempt to include him. Makoto picks up on his irritation, and bows out to go speak with a somehow more annoyed Togami. Hina doesn't seem to register Mondo's agitation and stays, giving Taka a rather detailed summary of the Captain something movie she'd been talking about the other day.

Kiyotaka's heard the phrase, "two's company, three's a crowd" before, and never really understood it. Whatever it means, must ring true for Mondo; he gets annoyed even without Makoto's additional presence, or maybe with something he or Hina has said and leaves, dragging his arm across the back of Taka’s neck and touching his cheek as he goes, leaning in a little too close to say “I’ll see ya later.”

Hina’s smirking at Mondo as he leaves, and sort of stumbles ( _swaggers? is that what she's doing?_ ) to the other side of Taka, turning once Mondo is out of sight, eyebrows raised and leaning in a slouch against the lockers. Kiyotaka takes in her posture with a frown. How do they all _do_ that?

“Sooo...” she drawls. “That, Taka?” she points. “ _That_ was flirting.” She leans in, body curled in excitement as it all dawns on her. “Wait, is that who you were talking about? The guy you think might be flirting with you?”

“Well -” His eyes flick over the room, surveying. He hates for people to overhear him being so socially inept. Hina’s grown patient, but most people just make fun of him for it. “Yes,” he admits. “I was talking about Mondo. But at this point, it seems unlikely. It’s probably more like wishful thinking.”

She grips his shoulder tightly, pulling him down to look at her. “What are you talking about? He’s constantly touching you! And you’re like, best friends, and that happened so quickly that, like – you know, he had to be into you already, like at least a little,” she says.

“It’s...” he frowns at the notebook in his hands. “It’s how he addresses me.”

She blinks at him. “Uh...sorry, I’m not following.”

“He calls me ‘bro,’” Taka explains. “And I know I’m not the most informed on the topic of relationships, but I don’t think he’d call me brother if he had a romantic or sexual interest in me.” She giggles, but for once his predominant emotional reaction isn’t panic. “What? What am I missing?”

“No, no – ‘bro’ is just what guys call each other when they’re close friends!” She gestures, and his eyes follow her hands as they move. “Like, people used to call each other ‘cuz’. And, I mean, yeah, it’s an abbreviation of ‘cousin’, but it doesn’t mean they’re literally related. It’s...” Her hands fall so she can cross her arms, glaring at the floor, suddenly quiet. “It’s also kinda like how straight girls call their girl friends...girlfriend.”

Taka can feel himself scowling at the locker Hina’s leaning on. “Doesn’t that get confusing?” She looks up. “Not the bro or ‘cuz thing. I know that’s just me. But- the ‘girlfriend’ thing. What if they’re talking to a woman who’s attracted to other women?”

“Ya got me there,” she grumbles. She spends a couple of seconds just standing there in silence, and Kiyotaka thinks of a question he doesn’t get to ask before she says, slowly, thought-out, “You know, the more I think about it, the more I understand why interacting with everyone’s kinda hard for you.”

He gasps a little. “You do?”

“Yeah, I mean, everyone’s got their own quirks in how they talk, and no one really just says things flat out the way you do,” she looks up at him, and he can’t really understand what expression she’s making with her mouth. It's kind of drawn back, and her eyes look sad, but not quite like she’s going to cry.

“Thanks,” he says awkwardly. What was he going to ask? “Oh. Uhm, do guys do the...the boy friend-boyfriend thing?”

She blinks. “No, no. Straight guys are like, way too concerned with upholding this fragile image of masculinity to even think about letting people consider that they’re gay.” She says it with such vitriol and sarcastic bite that Kiyotaka can’t help but laugh, and she smiles. “If Mondo calls you his boyfriend, it’s because he thinks you’re already in a relationship.”

Something inside feels like it teeters and falls over, and before he realizes what’s going on he’s crying again, tears splattering and racing across the cover of his notebook. His thoughts don’t even start to coalesce until after the downpour has started, his head resting on the cold metal of the locker and trying to awkwardly hold his books and wipe at his eyes.

Hina takes the items in his arm and sets them on the bench quickly, everything slapping loudly as she rushes to get her arms around Taka’s shoulders as best she can, rubbing his back. “Hey,” she whispers. “Hey, shhhh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I know,” he says, voice breaking. It's so stupid. There's nothing for him to be upset about, right? Except that he’s never really given himself to catch up to the all the laps he’s made in his mental track. It’s been over a year and he’s just been getting farther past the point of friendly feelings, to a distance where he can no longer see the starting line from where he is now. All he sees is open space.

He thinks he’s in love.

He wishes he could voice some of what he’s thinking, but he can’t figure out which words would relay it best. It’s like every description he knows leaves his mind at once, and slowly, so does the rest of his vocabulary.

He hates it, when things get like this. He has so many uncomfortable memories of teachers and classmates turning to look at him, crowding into his space and breathing against his skin, talking so loudly he can’t hear himself think and all of them demanding he open his mouth and speak. All it ever did was make him collapse, convince people that their notions of his idiocy was correct.

But Hina doesn’t ask him to talk. When he pushes at her arms to try and breathe, she backs up without defense, and says, “Don’t worry. We’ll work on something else.”

* * *

His meltdown in the locker room does not, apparently, stay between himself and Asahina. He’s not sure how Mondo finds about it, but he hovers over Kiyotaka for the rest of the day and glares at everyone who gets too close to the two of them, hand curled over Kiyotaka’s bicep. He knows that Mondo is a lot more physically affectionate than he’s used to, but even for Mondo it feels excessive.

It almost feels weird, having Mondo touch him like this. Maybe it's the over-stimulation from the crying or maybe it’s his brain finally playing catchup to his feelings, but Taka’s overly sensitive to the touch, as if everything else before this has been a fuzzy blob and now Mondo’s fingers are independent appendages... Why can his mind form such specific wording now, when he doesn’t need it?

 _Whatever_ , as Hina would say. The important part is this: Mondo is definitely acting odd.

He’s not sure he agrees with Hina’s assessment that Mondo is displaying romantic intent towards him, but every time she passes by and sees them coupled like this she winks at Taka and attempts to wiggle her eyebrows as an indicator. She’s not very good at it, but it is amusing and he catches himself smirking every time.

Even when night comes, Mondo doesn’t leave his side. And that’s really when Taka starts to question the intentions behind his continued presence.

He doesn’t mind spending time with his ‘bro,’ but he’s never spent this much time with another person before. Without prompting, Mondo follows Kiyotaka into his room and crashes on his bed, sliding his shoes off and sitting this his back pressed up against the wall. He watches Taka moving around his room, pulling off his jacket and rolling his sleeves up, undoing the top button of his shirt. And he seems a little bit annoyed by all of his movements.

Well, he’s annoyed by Mondo, too, and more than a little bit. He’s never been very good at picking up on social cues, and every time Mondo gives him that blank stare like the one he's giving him now, it’s hard for him to determine what the meaning is behind it. And he doesn't appreciate being penalized, even socially, when he doesn't know what it is he was meant to do in the first place.

He pulls out the chair to his desk, and he hears Mondo sigh. “Do you really have ta do that?” he asks.

Taka turns in his chair to look at Mondo. “I still have some work to complete before I go to sleep for the night.” He points at him with his pencil. The same one, he thinks, he almost broke the other day. “You could have brought your homework, too, and worked with me.”

Mondo grumbles something he doesn’t catch.

“What was that?” he asks.

“I said ya coulda done that instead of spending all yer time with yer new best friends!” he snaps. He looks away from Taka, face in red but not pretty. Mondo hops up, heading to the door. And Taka beats him to it, holding it shut with his body.

Mondo’s strong, but he’s not exactly weak. “Mondo! What is wrong?”

“It doesn’ matter,” he grinds out. “I’ll just leave so you can do yer fuckin’ homework.”

“Stop it!” Taka barks back. “Sit down! I’m not going to understand what’s wrong if you don’t tell me.”

Mondo tries to stare him down, but it goes nowhere. He makes a noise that’s almost a growl, but he does go and sit himself on the bed, arms resting on his knees, not meeting Taka’s gaze. It takes him another minute to actually start talking. “I guess ‘m just -” He looks so frustrated, but Taka’s not sure if it’s with him or the situation or himself or the words. “I’m just _jealous_ , arright?”

“ _Jealous?!_ ” Jealous? Was- Did he really hear that right? Mondo was jealous?

He feels like he can’t breathe, and it must be evident from the look on his face, because Mondo seems to have added panic into his mix of his emotions now. “It started off with Hina an’ now yer spendin’ all this time with Makoto, too? It’s like I never get ta spend time with you alone anymore.”

So... So he did want to be alone with Kiyotaka? So Hina was right! Mondo has been hitting on him! “There’s nothing going on between me and Makoto,” Taka says, sitting down next to Mondo, his hand on Mondo’s knee. “I don’t have the same feelings about him as I do about you.”

He can’t believe he just said it, like that! That was so easy. “Then why do ya keep hangin’ out with him?” Mondo asks.

“Because we’re friends,” Taka says. “That’s all.”

There’s something there, again, in this look Mondo’s giving him, that drives him crazy. He’s not a mind-reader, he doesn’t know what Mondo’s thinking or why he seems so confused. “But you’re not b-” And he’s going to say no, of course he’s not dating Makoto, wouldn’t he have told Mondo first if he had a boyfriend? But Mondo finishes his sentence with “Bros?”

He wonders if his grip on Mondo’s knee is too tight. He slips his fingers off to clasp into a fist with his nails digging into his palm. Mondo just meant it platonically? He just thought that Kiyotaka’s feelings that he just professed for him were platonic? He was only worried about being replaced as a best friend?

**_H O W ? !_ **

“No,” Kiyotaka says dully. “No. We are not ‘bros’.”

He stands up and heads to his desk. He can’t even look at Mondo right now. He feels baited, somehow.

Mondo doesn’t try to stop him from sitting at his desk or opening his books or pouring over them to keep himself from screaming or crying.

But he does start talking, even with Kiyotaka’s back to him. “I just don’t get what you see in me,” he says. “Every time you say somethin’ like -” he stops, and Kiyotaka hears him take a shaky breath, readjusting the words in his mouth before he begins again. “Every time you say we’re friends, ‘s like I just keep expectin’ it to be some kinda joke. Like I hear ya wrong. ‘Cause I’m just the dumb asshole who got his brother killed. I ain’t smart, I ain’t good at much of anythin’. I’m not attractive. I don’t know why someone like you would wanna be with me.”

Kiyotaka turns around to look at Mondo, hand at the nape of his neck, playing with his hair. He’s looking far-off and distant.

Taka moves, standing in front of his friend. While he’s not looking, Taka cuffs him upside the head.

“Ow! The fu-”

“Language!” Taka says, grabbing Mondo’s face between his hands, guiding him to look Kiyotaka in the eyes. _Like this, I could_ \- “I will not have you say such horrible things about my best friend!” _He’s close enough to_ \- “You are not dumb! You are not an a-hole! You are good at so many things, and you are -” _Cute like a dog, hot like the sun, I can kiss him when he’s this close -_ ”Not unattractive!”

He stands there, touching Mondo, expecting him to say at any second that Kiyotaka can and should let go of his face. But it doesn’t come, Mondo still staring even after Kiyotaka’s hands have slid away.

He looks a little better, but there’s something about him trembling. “Are you okay?” Kiyotaka asks.

“Uh.” Taka watches his throat move as he swallows. He thinks about what it would feel like to kiss it, and tells himself to stop. “Yeah, I just. Started thinkin’ about my bro, now.”

“Ah.” He fidgets, his fingers turning over themselves. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Mondo closes his eyes. He looks like he might start crying. “Nah. Not really. But – if ain’t a problem, can I just – just sit here, until it passes?” He won’t look up at him, but Taka can see his hand on the bed shaking and kneels. “I just get kinda scared t’ sleep when I get – wh-what're you -?”

Kiyotaka wraps his arms around Mondo’s middle, squeezing him tightly. He doesn’t know if other people like it, but it helps to calm him down and Mondo likes affection. With his head somewhere in Mondo’s midsection, he says, ”Stay as long as you need.”

* * *

“As long as you need” translates into Mondo falling asleep on his bed and waking up somewhere around three in the morning. He really doesn’t mind helping Mondo out, especially since he feels like the panic attack is partly – if not entirely – his fault. He just hadn’t been expecting it to take more than an hour, and got distracted by his work. Which means he only wound up sleeping a total of three hours last night himself.

Leon rounds the corner, voice too loud for Taka’s sleep-deprived brain to process properly. “Heyyyy buddy! So, you’re not gonna believe this story -” And he probably won’t. The makeup job he’s put on to try and convince Kiyotaka he’s been through whatever-it-is-this-time to get out of class, is very poorly done, and he’s just not in the mood to deal with it.

He hasn’t even heard the full thing before he cuts his classmate off. “Kuwata,” he says, voice a little too loud and feeling a little too worn out to control it, “I am aware that you think this charade is passing off on me, and no doubt you find the situation hilarious, but I’ve had very little sleep and would appreciate it if you could give me at least three hours worth of peace.”

Taka allows himself to bask in the momentary schadenfreude of Leon’s surprise and discomfort. “You - you know I’m bullshiting you?”

“Yes.” The stud in his lip quivers as he plays with it. Clearly, he’s expecting more of an answer, and with a good five more minutes of his schedule freed up, Taka can make time for it. “We have been attending classes together for almost three years now. I think I deserve some credit.”

When Leon still doesn’t reply and his blinks don’t seem to be a Morse code cry for help, Taka opts to walk around him.

Which seems to unstick his classmate. “Wait, no – no, no, no! Dude, you can _not_ just walk away like that!” He circles back around Taka to block his way out of the locker room, arms spread out, oblivious as everyone else seems to be that Taka is more than capable of moving him by force if it calls for it. “If you know I’m bullshitting you, then why the hell do you keep letting me talk?”

If he had even a little bit more energy, this is where Kiyotaka would be throwing his arms up in exasperation. “Because I tried that already, and ran out of polite but firm ways to respond to you. At least if I let you run your mouth, you practice your skills in argumentation – which, if the story you just tried to sell me has any shred of truth to it, will come in handy when you inevitably find yourself in court.” Kuwata’s face goes back to shocked again, and he’s not the only one. Kiyotaka himself can barely believe what he just said, and grinds his teeth against his lips in irritation. “My apologies. That was rude of me.”

“Uh,” Kuwata says, frown etching out on his face. And not in the angry way he’s used to seeing when Leon doesn’t quite get his message across to people. He actually looks kind of concerned “That’s cool, man. But are you like, okay to go to class? Now you mention it, you look like you’re gonna pass out.”

“I will be fine, thank you,” Taka says, still terse and mistrustful of this softer side of his classmate. Leon follows him out of the locker room moves ahead of him as they reach the classroom, opening the door for him.

“What the fuck did ya do ta your eye?” Mondo asks when they come in, and Leon presses a finger to his lips, pointing to Taka.

“Be gentle to him today,” Leon hisses. “He’s not feelin’ too good.”

Kiyotaka doesn’t see Mondo’s reaction, but he hears something like a pencil snapping.

* * *

“First kiss?”

Makoto rubs his chin in thought, as he tries to remember. “We’re just talking about on the lips, right?”

“Obviously,” Hina says. “Otherwise you’d have to count your family.”

Kiyotaka scrunches his face in disgust. “I always hated that.”

“Bad sensory thing, huh?” Hina asks.

“It’s not just that.” He experiments with hand gestures, copying something he’s seen Hina do herself. “My extended family isn’t that close. It’s like being kissed by a stranger.”

“Alright! I remember!” Makoto says. “Fourth grade. I got dared to kiss a girl on the playground. I think her name began with an M?” he smiles in embarrassment. “She hit me afterward.”

“I would too, if you kissed me and then forgot my name,” Taka says. Hina snorts. “What about you, Hina?”

“A girl at summer camp.” She shrugs. “I’m not allowed to say her name. She made me promise that no matter what, I can’t tell _anyone_. It was like, three years ago though.” She sniffs, eyes on her food. “She has a boyfriend, now.”

“I’m sorry,” Kiyotaka says. “That must be disappointing.”

“She wasn’t really my type,” Hina says. “But thanks, anyway.”

“What about you?” Makoto asks. “Have you ever -”

Makoto stops his question, looking up. Kiyotaka recognizes the shadow, even before he hears Mondo say “Has ‘e ever what?”

Hina looks over at Makoto, but doesn’t wait to see what kind of an expression he’s making before she turns back to Mondo, accompanied by Leon, and says, “First kisses.”

From what he can tell in his peripherals, it seems like Mondo cringes, embarrassed. “Does family count?” he asks. Leon laughs, and he punches him in the arm.

“Oh come on, man, I’m sure Makoto’s story is more embarrassing than family,” Leon says, arm extended.

“Fourth grade, playground. M- Misato! That was her name!” he says, excited.

“Ah. Well. Hina?” he asks.

“Summer camp.” She crosses her arms in the shape of an x. “The names have been redacted to protect the innocent!”

Leon rolls his eyes. “Lame!” He points his fork, piece of chicken dangling from his fork. “Taka? You?”

Taka’s looking at Mondo. Not at his eyes, as he’s been taught to do by so many teachers when delivering speeches, but at the corner of his jaw. “Actually, I’ve never kissed someone either.”

“Really? Not even one of the girls in -”

“Shut up, Leon,” Mondo says. “Not everyone’s so desperate they’ll kiss the first girl who comes onto ‘em.”

Taka has no idea what he’s referring to, but he feels something in his chest fall to his stomach and shatter. “You don’t have to just date girls,” Taka grumbles out, before he has a chance to stop himself.

The table gets really quiet, Hina’s eyes wide and hand covering her mouth. Makoto looks like he might be gripping her hand in a show of mutual anxiety. He can’t see what face Leon is making, but he’s sure it’s one of shock, like Mondo’s. “What... What does that mean?” he asks. His words come out all breathy and it makes the tip of Taka’s ears burn pink.

But he’s already said it, so he might as well commit to it. “You do realize boys exist, right? You don’t have to date a girl.” Mondo’s blinking at him without talking and it’s the same blank look like he expects Taka to read his mind and now his brain will not shut up, good god, _Kiyotaka Ishimaru don’t you dare -_ “The premise is essentially the same, I would think, for girls as it is for boys. You become friends, and from there you can develop a romantic relationship. From friendship.”

No one’s saying anything. Again. And Kiyotaka’s not altogether sure thate he can feel his body anymore, waiting for someone to please say something.

“Are you sayin’...” _Yes, Mondo?_ “That I should...” **_Yes, Mondo?_** “Start out by makin’ friends with a girl?”

Kiyotaka doesn’t answer. Not with words, anyway. Makoto watches as Taka’s hands drop chopsticks, and he stands.

And now that he has some context for it all – and yes, Makoto can understand exactly why it is Taka’s so frustrated, and leaving broken halves of pencils all over the place. He watches Taka storm out of the cafeteria, mouthing the words _I’m sorry!_ to him in the hopes he won’t find more helpless victims when they leave to head to his first class, hearing him scream as soon as he’s in the hallway by himself.

Mondo, astute as always, asks, “What’s his problem?”

Makoto would gape at him, but he knows it would hypocritical. Until two months ago, he’d also assumed that the bulk of Ishimaru’s dialogue was severely misguided attempts at camaraderie. So he can’t judge, and it’s not really his place to out Taka (even if he isn’t exactly _in_ ), but maybe he can help out a little bit. Maybe he can at least put the thought in Mondo’s head. “Hey, Mondo?”

“Huh? Yeah?” he says, completely distracted by Kiyotaka’s retreating form.

Under the table, Hina squeezes his hand, a way to ask _Are you sure?_ He drops her hand, tapping the table like Taka does when he’s anxious. “Have you ever considered that maybe Taka isn’t as oblivious as he seems?”

Mondo blinks at him, very slowly. Makoto can kind of understand why Taka says Mondo reminds him of a dog. Which only leads him to the absolutely ridiculous image of Mondo trying to sit like one in his lap, and he digs his teeth into his bottom lip to keep from laughing because dog or not, Mondo can still beat the shit out of him. “What d’you mean?” he asks, and Makoto watches as he starts to realize what it is Makoto's trying to suggest. "Ya don't - Yer not saying he was hittin' on me, are ya?" 

Makoto taps his fork against his plate, nervous. "You really don't think there's any chance -"

“No!” Mondo cuts him off, panicked. “Of course he wasn’t! He’s just very -” he flusters, hands waving in the air as his cheeks burn. “He’s naïve, okay! _Stop looking at me like that!_ ”

“Right,” Makoto says flatly, not even attempting to stop looking at Oowada like that. “Naive.”

“What - What does that mean?” Mondo snaps. “The fuck’s with that tone a voice? What the fuck’r you implyin’? That Taka might be flirtin’ with me _on purpose_?!”

“Dude,” Leon says, not bothering to look up from his food, “Taka’s _always_ been hitting on you on purpose.” Makoto covers Hina’s mouth to keep her from shouting the same thing he’s thinking: _You know?!_

Mondo scoffs, angry, picking up both his food and Taka’s forgotten bowl. “That kinda shit counts as sexual harassment,” he hisses. “Taka’s gonna put yer ass in detention when I fuckin’ tell him.”

The three remaining watch him leave, Makoto letting his hand drop from Hina’s mouth as he turns to stare at Leon.

Leon, who only shrugs and says, “So what? He gives me detention all the time anyway.”

* * *

He’s not expecting Mondo to follow him out. He figures that Mondo will eventually ask him to explain why he got up and left so suddenly, but he was assuming there’d be some time for him to breath and collect himself before the moment came. Now, as it always happens, he looks like an ass.

Mondo taps his shoulder, letting Kiyotaka spin around into it and hold him in place. “Hey, man, I gotta – I gotta tell ya somethin’.”

 _This is it_ , he thinks. _This is going to be him rejecting me_. But at least him coming out here like this, following him – that means he wants to stay friends, right? He wouldn’t follow Taka out if he found his attraction to him repulsive. “Yes. Okay. What is it?”

Mondo looks around them, and leans in. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” he mumbles.

“It’s alright,” Taka says, but Mondo still looks nervous. “Whatever it is, I won’t judge you for it!”

Mondo sighs, looking around again and moving to lean up against the wall. He closes his eyes for a moment while he breathes in, and reopens them when he exhales. “It’s just – people keep like – you know – sometimes ya say things and like -” _Yes?_ Mondo throws his hands in the air, knocking his hand against the wall, eyes fidgeting between Taka’s face and the floor. “People are starting to say that you’re, like, flirtin' with me or somethin’!”

His stream of consciousness really should stop there, and god help him he looks like he wants it to. But for as red as his face is getting he can‘t seem to actually make himself stop, and Taka doesn’t have time to get used to the feeling of yet another aborted attempt at a confession before Mondo presses on. “And I know that’s like fuckin’ ridiculous, I keep tellin’ ‘em yer just really friendly, and stuff – but like – they're just really insistent about it!” It’s weird, how pained Mondo looks about it all when it’s Kiyotaka they’re supposedly talking about. “And I know it’s dumb t’ get so worked up about it, ‘s not like any’a that shit matters, but I don’ like people spreadin’ rumors about you!”

He’s sure his face is giving off the wrong kind of emotion because Mondo seems to look at what he guesses is slack-jawed horror and thinks _this is because I’m telling him something bad_ instead of Kiyotaka simply having hit the end of his metaphorical rope, grasping at straws and getting redder in the face the longer he talks.

He recognizes he’s at a crossroads here. He can either put an end to this, tell Mondo in the plainest way he can that he is, in fact, ~~in love with~~ ~~crushing on~~ attracted to him; or he can deny it, work to hide his feelings, closet himself.

But it’s not really a choice. Not for him. He's never been able to hide his emotions.

Ideally, he’d say something smart, something to-the-point but not tactless. But his mouth, as always, moves faster than his mouth and what he says instead is, “Rumors are reprehensible -” which gives Mondo a minute to breathe, followed by, “Good thing it’s not a rumor.”

He shouldn’t enjoy the look of shock on Mondo’s face. This isn’t the kind of satisfying conclusion that he wanted, not by a long shot, but at least now he can get an answer to the verbal do-you-like-me note he’s been trying to pass for the last year or so.

Or, that’s what the thinks, until Mondo asks him, “So - so what are you saying?”

It would only take him maybe five more minutes worth of explaining to get his point across, and after waiting this long it’s really not so much more work to do in the long run. But this whole thing, this whole exercise, has officially ran the course of Kiyotaka’s patience.

* * *

“Hey, Taka -”

“Don’t even talk to me,” he snaps, pushing past Mondo into the kitchen.

Eight days. This is the longest they’ve ever gone without talking. Even before they were friends, they talked more than this. 

He sees, in his peripherals, Mondo looking around at the rest of their class, helpless. No one really bothers to meet his gaze, and Junko supplies, unhelpfully, “Don’t look at _us_.”

“Can one of you talk to him?” he pleads, turning to his left.

“No,” Toko says, words garbled around the thumbnail she's chewing on. She’s the last person Kiyotaka thinks he’ll hear joining in on the conversation (well, except maybe Togami), and yet here she is. “C-Can you bl-blame him? You’re s-supposed to be his best f-friend, and you didn’t even realize he’s g-gay?”

“Well, that’s not really fair,” Celes says. “A lot of us didn’t know. I’m not even sure how you know, when you’ve barely ever spoken to him.”

“Well, d-duh, I have b-bifocals,” she says. Kiyotaka can’t see her from the kitchen, but he imagines she’s rolling her eyes. And if they're going to talk about this, like he isn’t right there, then he can just eat in the kitchen and join the class when they’re not discussing his very embarrassing and public blowup the other day, thank you very much.

“Huh? Are you sayin’ your glasses give you special powers?” That would be Hiro’s voice. Even if it hadn’t sounded like him, no one else would have said something that stupid.

“It’s a p-pun, you dolt,” Toko says, in the closest thing her nervous voice can manage to a snap. “It’s like gaydar, b-but for bisexuals.”

“So...” he hears Makoto draw out, “Would the pan version be...panorama?”

“I g-guess that works...”

Well, it’s very nice that his class decided to have their first gay-straight alliance meeting out in the dining hall, and maybe when he’s not so angry and overwhelmed by everything he’ll be able to look back on this and laugh or, at the very least, not feel like screaming. But he’s done with his food and it’s Sunday, so he has another day left to sulk in his room and not think about how upset he is about Mondo.

It seems, at first, that Mondo’s too distracted by the latest discussion (should it really be ‘bifocal’ or should it be ‘bi-fi’? what's the lesbian version? what's the asexual version? what’s the -) to notice him leaving and try to catch up. And really, Taka should be more thankful to Makoto and Hina and even Leon for -

“Hey, man, wait up!” Taka sighs, letting his head drop to his chest. Thought too soon, apparently. “Come on, man, we gotta talk about -”

“Look,” Taka says, cutting him off. “I’m sorry I kept pushing it the issue. I thought that you had managed to misconstrue my words as friendly. I am not always the best at reading social cues. Please forgive me. Next time I will take your fabricated confusion as rejection. In the future, if I do something that makes you uncomfortable, please feel free to tell me, and I will stop.”

“You weren’t making me uncomfortable,” Mondo says, grabbing his arm. “Taka -”

Kiyotaka sighs loud enough to cover his words, rubbing his forehead. “Mondo, please. Don’t - don’t sugarcoat it for my benefit, alright? It was my mistake. Can we just move on?”

“No!” Mondo says. And just kind of...leaves it there, licking his lips nervously. And he keeps staring, face getting redder and turning into something almost blue. Kiyotaka’s about to tell him to remember to breathe when he opens his mouth and shouts, “I LIKE YOU, OKAY?”

Taka blinks at him, frowning. For a second, he considers asking Mondo what he means, giving him a polite way to back out of it. But he finds himself saying, “Don’t do this.” 

“DON’T DO WHAT?” Mondo screams.

Kiyotaka pulls his arm free from Mondo’s hand and says “This! Don’t take pity on me because I’m the stupid gay kid with a crush on his straight best friend. Don’t lie to me because you’re afraid I’m going to leave if you don’t return my feelings. Don’t demean me like that! I would never do something like that to you, to _anybody_. I just need some space to get over it, and I'll be fine.”

He tries to leave, and Mondo follows him. And maybe that’s on him, maybe it’s _all_ on him, for trying to get space and activating his fear of abandonment, but he’s been feeling freaked out and it’s just getting worse and now, he can’t breathe.

He manages to make it to his door before Mondo catches up. “THE HELL MAKES YOU THINK I’M FAKIN’ IT?” he shouts, and Kiyotaka’s whole head is ringing.

He’s starting to shut down now. It’s not even just the crying, or the noise. It’s the everything. Time doesn’t feel real. It’s like everything around him is dissolving and he’s sinking, body numb. He can feel his body moving without his control, can see the shadow of someone over him. He thinks someone asks if he’s okay because he hears himself saying “No, I’m not!” without the feeling of his mouth moving.

His door opens. He’s not sure how it does or how he gets in his room. He's only vaguely aware of moving his limbs to crash on the bed. He thinks Mondo’s removing his boots, but he’s not even really sure of that.

“Is there anything you need me ta do?”  he asks.

He gives himself a half second to think about it before he says, “Lay on me."

He doesn’t know if he can see or feel Mondo’s response better. “What? No, man, that’ll crush you!”

“Just do it!”

He can tell Mondo’s still hesitant, but he doesn’t argue. He looks awkward about it, moving carefully, one leg between Taka’s and setting his chest down slowly. It doesn’t feel like he really relaxes, but it’s good enough to make Taka’s heart rate slow down. “Is this okay?” he asks, and Taka nods, eyes closed, hoping Mondo won’t expect him to talk for a while, or move.

It takes a minute. Several minutes. But things do start to come back to him, stop spinning. He starts to see the world in its correct colors, to feel time moving at the right speed. To smell Mondo, lying on top of him.

It would be nice if he hadn't screwed everything up. Hm. “Can I ask you a question?” Mondo asks. From the sounds of it, he’s calmer now too, although Kiyotaka can feel his heart racing where his chest is pressed against his shoulder.

“Technically, you just did. But, yes,” Taka says, his voice feeling too low. “Go ahead.”

He feels Mondo swallow before he asks. “Why’d you think I would lie t'you?”

Taka can’t see his face from the angle they’re both at, but everything – the tone of his voice, the words he chooses – sounds hurt. And it almost makes him hurt, too, to hear it, but he needs to be honest. “Back when we’d only been friends for a month and a half, and I kept telling you the days I counted?” Mondo hums to indicate he’s following. “I embarrassed you by saying it too loudly in the hallway.”

“You got upset and didn’t talk t’ me for almost a week,” Mondo says.

“I was trying to deal with it. Trying to get over embarrassing you,” Taka says. “But you came by my room and you told me that it didn’t really bother you, that you wanted me to tell you.” Mondo doesn’t say anything, so he adds, “You were lying. I knew you were lying, but I couldn’t get the words out to tell you how much it bothered me.”

They’re silent for a couple minutes more, before Mondo asks, “Can I move a bit?”

He doesn’t want him to. “Yes.”

Mondo slides to the side, legs still tangled in Taka’s, and puts his hand on Taka’s cheek to force his attention on him. “I wasn’t lying.” Taka scowls, and he squishes his face to keep him from talking. “I don’t know how ta handle people bein’ nice ta me. Went all the way through middle school with people sayin’ shit about me likin’ guys, tellin’ me I’d grow outta it or callin’ me diseased or sayin’ it’s ‘cause I couldn’t get a girl ta like me. So I kept tellin’ m’self that you were just bein’ nice, and I didn’t want ta get my hopes up.”

His hold on Taka’s face softens, letting him talk. “You acted embarrassed...as a defense mechanism?”

He nods. “Four hundred n’ thirty-four.”

Kiyotaka blinks, starts to think of something and shuts it down, tearing at the skin on his bottom lip with his teeth. “Pardon?”

“Four hundred an’ thirty-four days we been friends,” he says. “Ya stopped markin’ it on yer calendar ‘cause you thought I’d get mad. An’ I didn’ know how to tell ya that I wasn’t without makin’ myself look stupid.” He smirks, and Taka squirms, forgetting one of Mondo’s legs is between his own. His face must be burning Mondo’s hand, but he can’t make himself push it away. “But you already knew that. I know you seen the smiley faces I put on it. Now who’s pretending to be dense?”

“In all fairness,” Taka starts, “You’ve had more than your fair share of -” Mondo uses the hand on his face to pull him closer, fingers in the back of his hair solid and unmoving and safe when he kisses him.

It’s a little clumsy. He doesn’t know how to breathe like this and he probably shouldn’t be doing this when he’s just had a panic attack, but it’s nice and he wants to and he’s been wanting this for over a year now. It’s good for his mental health. It is, as Celes would say, ‘self care’.

Mondo pulls away, and Taka is fully prepared to follow him as far as he needs to. “Are you -” Taka catches his top lip, and Mondo stops the words he’s about to say to kiss him back. “Are ya sure you want -” His hand is on Mondo’s chest, and he can see how pink his face is getting. Pretty, and flushed, like every time he told him what number day it was. “Are ya sure you wanna be with me? I’m -”

“Mondo Oowada.”

“Yeah?” His eyes are half closed, half worried.

 _He’s so cute_ , Taka thinks, _And he’s mine now_. “Please do not make me hit you again.”

He feels Mondo’s thumb brush his cheek, his eyes down on his face... On his mouth. He thinks. He’s fairly sure. “What if ya just hit me with yer mouth?”

“Hm.”

“On my mouth?”

“Maybe.”

“Softly?”

“I can’t promise you anything,” Taka says, and waits until he kisses Mondo to let the laugh at the look on his face manifest against his lips.

* * *

For the first time in quite a while (those days he has not counted, no matter what his classmates believe), Mondo is the one that meets him first at his locker. He really only intends to give him a smile while he sorts out the rest of his papers for class, but Mondo has always been needy when it comes to affection.

Read: he leans forward and kisses him.

It’s very sweet, and very nice, and Taka likes kissing him. He’s far enough in his classes that he’s decided he can take an hour out of his study time to devote to boyfriend time, which he tells Mondo is its own sort of studying. Mondo blushes and asks if he’s aware of the implications, and Taka smirks but doesn’t answer.

But still. He pushes him back with a hand on his chest. “Mondo. PDA.”

“Sure is,” he says. He leans in again, and Taka tells himself it doesn’t really count as kissing back if their lips don't part.

“It’s -” he brings his arm up to his face to check his watch, “Eight fifty-one in the morning.”

“I know,” Mondo says, and kisses him again.

He pushes him back again. “Mondo, seriously! Public Displays of Affection during school hours are forbidden. School hours are between eight-thirty A.M. and four-thirty P.M., Monday through Friday -”

“So give yourself detention,” Mondo says, and this time when he kisses Kiyotaka it’s with one hand on his waist and Taka lets out a stupid noise against his mouth.

He blushes, feeling something more positive than embarrassed (flustered? enamored?), and pulls back. “I already _have_ ,” he says. “And you.”

“So it’s a date.” Mondo smirks as he says it and kisses him, short this time, pressing kisses on his mouth, his cheek up by his ear. Taka starts saying something about how detention is most certainly not a date, not something he should be looking forward to, but his eyes kind of cross trying to figure out what it is Mondo is whispering after every time he kisses him.

_Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three..._

“Are you counting?” he asks.

“Yep.”

His hand is on Mondo’s shoulder, under his jacket, thumb pressing against his neck. “What for?”

_Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight..._

“Every day I wanted to kiss you, but didn’t.”

It’s said just in his ear, quietly enough that no one else could hear him. But it reverberates somewhere in Taka’s chest when he hears it, sighing shortly and pushing Mondo away to drop his books on the bench behind him.

He can’t let Mondo think he has the upper hand. Not when he spent so much time keeping Taka waiting.

Taka turns on his heels to face Mondo, leaning against the lockers in a slouch and smirking at him, takes his face in his hands and pulls him down to kiss him. It's still not perfect, but that’s what practice is for. It’s not like Mondo seems to mind when he kisses him once, twice, three times, four times.

Mondo whines at him when he pushes him away again, slamming his locker shut. “There,” Taka says. “That’s a week of detention for myself, and...” he counts on his fingers, just for show. “Two weeks detention for you. Any more and you will have in-school suspension.” He looks at him, sternly, like he would anyone else. “I’ll see you in Classroom 1-B after school.”

“It’s a date,” Mondo says as he walks away.

Kiyotaka rolls his eyes.


End file.
